Penis Galore! I mean, German Saunas

I have always firmly believed in doing things just for the experience. Before I left for Germany, it was my goal to do as many things as I could that I have never done before. I mean, the big one, obviously, was moving to another country. Some days, it is small, like actually waking up when my alarm goes off and going to class (today, epic fail). Traveling alone for three weeks in a place where no one speaks my language (fluently, I guess, since the German education system actually requires their students to learn foreign languages...fancy that), check. A lot has happened over here in Deutschland that has made me grow as a person. Ha ha, that verb is so going to be euphemism later on.

This week has been pretty shitty. Actually, Monday was all right, which gave me hope for the rest of my week, but then I woke up on Tuesday--fucking Tuesday--to freezing cold temperatures and snow on the ground, and I just knew. It was so not going to be good. I had two tests on Tuesday, neither of which I was entirely prepared for, but I have always been quite good at winging things. Like I told my mom: when you set the bar low from the get-go, people do not expect too much from you. So when you exceed expectations with little to no effort, people think you are actually trying. I do not know whether or not my mother was proud of this little personality trait of mine or disappointed. Either way, it has severed me well in my education. I know my accounting professors would disagree, and sadly, accounting may be the one example where I actually just do suck at it. I cannot help it. I am a creative person. The world is a cruel, cruel place when it rewards the drones in jobs that suck your soul out, but leave you struggling to make ends meat when you have a creative bone. The world needs more creative people.

Okay, ADD, back on track. So I took these tests on Tuesday and it was, well, how do I put this: fucking scheiß horrible. My reading test was all right; I am sure I still did pitifully dreadful, though maybe I surprised myself. Who knows. My grammar test, however. You know those moments where something is so horrible that you do not know whether or not you should laugh or cry? Like you start out laughing, and then you laugh so hard that you cry, and then you are just blubbering like an idiot? I had that moment looking at this test. I had absolutely no idea. NO IDEA. The last time I felt that hallowing hole of despair in the pit of my stomach was my Accounting 306 final. When a teacher calls you into his office after a test and says you would be better off just dropping the class and trying again in the fall, you know you might have done poorly.

I did not even understand the entire back page, let alone have the ability to follow the directions. I think I filled some stuff in, some in German, some in English, there may have even been some Spanish in there, and turned my test in. As I was walking out the door, I said to Frau Grigorieva: "you know, I think under different circumstances, you and I would have been friends." She smiled at me and said "probably." To which I promptly retorted: "but now, hells no. I just do not think our relationship would work after this." And walked out of the classroom. I am nothing if not eloquent with words.

So after that: slight funk. Followed by a night of drunk cooking. Followed by more funk. And "Fried Green Tomatoes." Which just made me even more depressed. Nothing makes you question your life choices like being bitch-slapped by something that you just cannot seem to attain. For me: language acquisition. And that fucking game with numbers...Suduko? What the hell is that even called. Okay, not important.

Yesterday, I went to class, where I was in a foul mood, and was preparing to go home and wallow in my self-pity with a jar of peanut butter and large pizza, when Estelle texted me and asked me if I would be interested in going to the sauna. Well, quite frankly no, no I would not. I told her I was in a pissy mood and the last thing I needed to do was waltz around in front of people naked while sweating balls (I said all this in English, to which she responded I needed to say it in German because she was doing chat on her iPhone and did not have google translate. I told her I knew that, and I wrote in English when I didn't want her to know what I was typing. She called me a bitch). Anyway, she told me that I needed to get my ass over there now or she would, I believe the verb was "schlagen" me. Well, always the submissive, I packed my backpack full of "sauna" essentials and headed over (after having a drink). She promised that I would feel better after. I doubted this seriously.

Okay, lets talk about German saunas.

Keep in mind that I am an American, which makes me inherently somewhat of a prude, but also means I am used to saunas attached to locker rooms at Golds Gym, where you are actually required to be in some form of clothing. This particular sauna was not just a sauna, but a culmination of, like, seven different saunas, a pool, hot tub, meditation room, relaxation rooms, snack bar, beer bar, etc. Imagine if Wal-Mart was a sauna: your one-stop total relaxation experience. We paid to go in and went into the locker room which, by the way, was co-ed. Okay, shocker number one (ha ha, shocker). So I disrobed and promptly put on the robe that Estelle had brought for me. We went out into what I guess was the main area of this ginormous establishment and all I saw were penises. PENISES everywhere! Penises attached to fat men, skinny men, balding men, hairy men, young men, old men. You name it, there was a penis attached to it. I could not stop staring. I have never seen so many naked men in one place. Lets not even talk about the last time I actually saw a penis just hanging out; imagine seeing, like, 20 of them all in a row.

Now I guess I have just been lucky with the penises that I have seen, but I did not know they came in such varying sizes. If I were to create a scale upon which to base the sizes of the penises I saw, it would range from lemon (sick) to foot long hot dog (sick). And here is another little tid bit of information: apparently the majority of men in Europe ARE NOT circumcised. My level of allowable trauma in one day was far, far surpassed. Or so I thought. Until a guy walked by who was OBVIOUSLY really excited to be in the sauna. Seriously, buddy? So not okay.

Oh, and it was not just naked men, mind you. Though few and far between, there were naked women as well. Mostly old naked women, which depressed me ever so slightly. It is one thing to read about what time will inevitably do to your once (sort of) tight, wrinkle-free, skin cancer-free, young 20-something body. It is quite another to actually see what is going to happen. The day my tits sag lower than my chatch is the day I move up to the mountains and start raising goats before meeting my timely end. Or, hopefully by that point, cosmetic surgery will be such that they can transplant my brain into a newer, younger body.

When I finally got sort of used to all these scary naked German men walking around, and by used to, I mean that I was able to have a conversation with Estelle without gawking at a wagging pork sausage as it walked by, I began to really enjoy the sauna experience. At this particular sauna, they have a schedule of when you can go get tortured in an exceedingly hot room. After my first time in the room that, I am fairly certain, was upwards of 90 degrees CELCIUS, I realized why everyone was walking around naked. Imagine playing tennis against Lindsay Davenport in Tucson in July at noon. And then imagine, on top of that, that some dude who really enjoys torturing other people comes in and starts waving a hot towel at you, thus making it feel like you are getting hit in the face with, well, while we are on the topic of penises, Satan's fiery sword. That is what this room was like. I attempted to keep my towel on during this 15 minutes of hell (literally), but by the second go-round, I flung that bad boy off and just splayed out in all my glory. It was fantastic; I am pretty sure I sweated out a baby, and probably every last drop of alcohol I had consumed in the last four weeks.

So, to leave out all the other nitty, gritty details (oh, like naked pool swimming, going to another sauna that smelled like three-week old vag, having some guy hit on me in the sauna while I am sweating like a pig and naked, and while HE is sweating like a big-ass hairy pig and naked (p.s. buddy, even if I swung that way, not impressed)) I had a wonderful time at the sauna. So I guess Estelle was right; my shitty week got exponentially better after that (and I subsequently made a conscious decision to not go to class for the rest of the week). The sauna kind of reminds me of being high, though I think it is my brain screaming at me for trying to fry it in my skull. But I left really wanting a bacon cheeseburger.

the little gnomes that live in my room.

I swear they do. They have to. I have started to notice that little things are going missing. I am down to one knife. One. I started out with five. Knives just don't up and disappear. My life is not an episode of "Law and Order." I am not concealing crucial evidence. And Christ, these knives aren't even sharp enough to cause any real damage. It takes all my strength to cut through an effing tomato!

And pairs of socks. Like entire pairs. At least these little fuckers are considerate and take both socks instead of just one. There is nothing more irritating than only being able to find one fucking sock.

And my freaking bottle opener. My really nice bottle opener that has a lovely Universität des Saarlandes logo on it. Gone. Without a trace. Which means that these little gnomes are probably hiding under my bed, using my knives, socks and bottle opener in some strange, fetish-y way that I do not even want to think about. Pervy little gnomes.

Anyhoo, I am sitting here on a Friday night in my room blogging because I just do not have the energy to go out tonight. But the good thing about living sort of on campus...when I get bored and want people to come over, they are just a phone call away, and probably live within walking distance. It is hard for me to remember whether or not I had a social life on the weekends back in Boise. It seems to me that I was so exhausted by the end of the week that more likely than not, I spent my Friday nights catching up on all my favorite television shows, eating pizza and drinking wine with my cats. Is that pathetic? When did I become THAT person??

But is there really anything wrong with wanting to be alone after spending an entire week interacting with people (mostly BSU students) who I find to be incredibly draining with their competitive and antisocial personalities (and cue the accounting department)? I do no think so. Some of my friends seem to, however. I do not know. I have always been fine entertaining myself. Fuck me, I am the funniest person I know. I mean, I will not deny that more than once, I have probably gotten inebriated and turned up music really loud and lip-synched to my reflection in my bathroom mirror while prancing around in my underwear. Who WOULDN'T be jealous of a weekend full of that? It just has fun written all over it.

But tonight, I have some people coming over to my closet of a dorm room and we are going to eat pizza and drink and watch "RED"...in ENGLISH. See, I am getting better about including people in my naked dancing lip-synch-a-thons!

In other news, I bitch-slapped my test in my class today with a fucking 2x4. Ha ha, fuck you, test! You are my bitch now! We will see how cocky I am after my grammar test on Tuesday, however. I am fairly certain that the vast majority of the test will consist of me, and I quote directly from the worksheet I have sitting in front of me, "Wandeln Sie die Partizipialkonstruktionen in Relativesätze um." Well fuck me sideways, I do not even know what that means! I do not even think that is a real word. Why the Germans insist upon shoving all their words together to make one giant word is beyond me. And how do they have enough air in their lungs to pronounce some of these words??? Everyone over here smokes! I know that has to affect their lung capacity! I think it must have something to do with years of German breeding. It only makes sense. Germans are bred to drink beer, watch fußball, smoke copious amounts of tobacco and pronounce insanely long words that make no sense to everyone else on the planet while sounding like they are going to beat the shit out of you for existing.

Someone today also told me that I needed to work on my German accent, because I sound too American. I am not entirely sure I want to sound like a dominatrix. I think I have a commanding voice anyway; I think if you couple that with angry German hacking and spitting, it is just going to be too much for people in America. Someones head might explode. I cannot be responsible for heads exploding. But I think my American accent over here is cute. The Germans probably find it super annoying. But whatever.

I hate Tuesdays (and other tales of woe)

I hate Tuesdays. I have always hated Tuesdays. Tuesdays could be my least favorite day ever. Even more so than Mondays. I mean, Monday at least feels like a fresh start...like Sunday. But Tuesdays? There is nothing good about Tuesdays. Crappy television, shitty drink specials. Basically, Tuesday ist scheiße.

I especially hate Tuesdays where I wake up and think "oh, fuck me. This is not going to be a good day." Anyone here take Ambien? Or any sort of sleeping aide? And you know, when it wears off after four hours, and you're awake at five a.m., groggy and feeling like someone has slipped something in your drink, and you feel that way for the rest of the morning? Yup, THAT is how my morning started out. Feeling like, I am sure, Lindsay Lohan feels every morning. Like the world has just shoved a large, barbed-wire wrapped bat up my hoohah. Fuck you, Ambien. Work like you are supposed to!

So an update on my money. The money was found. YAY! Apparently my mother, after asking my father to which account she should transfer the money, sent it to the University. (insert groan here). So yesterday evening, I received an email from my father informing me that I needed to go to the University and have them wire the lump sum to my account, because, well, it did not belong to them. I would like to thank my father for providing me with what I have deemed "learning opportunities" in Germany. Whereby fuck all happens and I have to try to fix it with a fucking language barrier and a short fuse. So thanks, pops! You are the best.

I met up with Katrin because, heaven forbid, I find myself in a situation where I am trying to play charades with some woman who doesn't speak English. Thankfully, one of the girls in the office did speak English. When I went in and told her I had a problem, she asked me what my name was. "Sarah Ober," I replied. She looked at me and said, "oh, your father has given us a great deal of money!" Wait, what?? These bitches knew that they had my money, on accident, and no one thought to contact me?? What the fuck is that?? So she led us down a hallway to another office, with two other women in it, and in German (by the way, I can understand German now) said "Oh, this is Sarah Ober." And the women in the office laughed. And she said "you are quite famous here." Fantastic. In addition to being groggy and irritable, I was now being openly mocked by German women.

With the click of a button, another women transferred all my money to MY German bank account. Why they could not have just called me last week and informed me of the snafoo, I do not know. Maybe because they, too, wanted to provide me with ample learning opportunities in Deutschland. Like trying to communicate with Stapler-dude at the bank. So far, I am down two points.

I managed to make it to class on time, which was good since I seem to be having quite a difficult time with that, and all things were going well. I even spoke GERMAN in my listening comprehension class. I was feeling quite proud of myself, like I was a fucking Deutsch God, until my grammar class. I think Frau Grigorieva just has a knack for bringing me down off Cloud 9 and bitch-slapping me in the taco (thanks, Glee, for my new favorite saying).

In four weeks, we have what the Studienkolleg calls the "E-test." This is very similar to the test I had at the beginning of the term back in August whereby they gauge our German comprehension and place us in a level of German accordingly. I would just like to state that despite the fact that my speaking skills may not be all that great (I hear my German friends snickering right now), I can actually read and write fairly proficiently. Understanding grammar rules has never been a problem of mine. Chalk it up to the English nerd in me. Once I learn a grammar rule, it usually sticks (at least as far as writing goes). So I know that, since August, I have become much better with German. Or at least so I thought. Frau Grigorieva handed out this sample test from 1994, just so we could get a feel for it, and I just stared at it, mouth agape. You know that fish market in Seattle on the Pier? Where they will throw a giant fish at you should you ask, in hopes that you will catch it just so you can say, fuck yes I caught a giant fish! Okay, now imagine that someone hurls a massive fucking 50 pound fish at you and instead of catching it, it hits you in the face. And you are left standing there, stunned with fish slime dripping down your face, reeking of two-week old vag...

That is how I felt at that exact moment.

WHAT THE FUCK DID THIS TEST EVEN SAY???

There were no words. No words. I wasnt even entirely sure what the directions were telling me. So I did what I do in all situations that I find uncomfortable: I started laughing uncontrollably. And Frau Grigorieva just looked at me and asked (I think, because it was auf Deutsch and I am far from a Deutsch God) "what is wrong, Sarah? A catastrophe? Why are you laughing?" Why am I laughing?? Why am I laughing?? Because my soul is slowly leaking out my butt! Because my will to live has been crushed! Because you are ruining my life woman!

So I am basically fucked. I hope I get placed at least a little bit above the level I am currently in. Maybe I should spend the month of February actually studying, and reading things other than Cosmo in German. Dammit all.

I was pretty much so distraught after my class that I did not want to leave my room. I wanted to hole up and watch "Bones" with my fucking rainbow chip frosting and perhaps a bottle of wine. Estelle invited me over, though, and made me dinner, which pretty much made me super, super happy (um, there were mashed potatoes involved. SUPER good mashed potatoes). And even though she told me that I am like a guy (pardon me?? Just because I cannot cook for shit, and maybe I fall asleep after I eat, does not mean that I do not have other valuable domestic skills. I can vacuum and dust like a mother fucker, thank you) I am feeling a little bit better about life, though I still think I am about to run a train on this can of frosting.


www.nataliedee.com