Oh man oh man!

I know exactly the frustration this American guy went through to get his German driver’s license.

“Germany recognizes only the licenses of 24 U.S. states that have taken the trouble to negotiate a reciprocity agreement. If you come from one of the states that hasn’t — in my case, New York — you’re out of luck. [Ironically, clueless U.S. tourists can drive all they want, but permanent residents, fluent in the language and immersed in the culture, need a license.]”

My last American license was issued in Connecticut and they have some sort of agreement with Germany so that I only had to take the written test. The thing that pisses me off though is that he didn’t have to give up his American license. I did. 10 minutes of arguing with the life-sucking force of German bureaucracy didn’t help. I no longer have an American driver’s license. Every time I go back I forget to get it renewed. Bah!

Bonkers over Bread | Culture & Lifestyle | Deutsche Welle | :

“Germany has more kinds of bread than any other country and every year new varieties are released to an enthusiastic public. They call bread the staff of life and indeed, Germans would have a very hard living without it.”

This is true. Brot is everywhere. So good luck with that Atkins diet if you come to Germany. Maybe that is why that fad never seemed to have caught on here. Give up bread? Das kannst Du vergessen! However, the article does say that low-carb bread is gaining in popularity with the health conscience crowd. Low-carb bread? That is like having dehydrated water.

In America there are mainly three kinds of bread: white, whole wheat and rye. If you can find a real bakery you can probably find other varieties as well but the selection is never as diverse as it is in Germany.

Not saying it’s better or worse, just different.

Random German vocabulary: The German word for supper is Abendbrot literally “evening-bread”.

I made some template changes and then republished all the blog entries but when I do that Blogger likes to replace umlauts and apostrophes with wacky symbols and nonsense. Damn. So if you see strange symbols, don’t worry. I know.

There is a bar here called, wait for it…..wait….The WunderBar (sigh). It had to move shop recently due to a conflict with the previous landlord. They were supposed to have the grand opening in their new location last night with free music and booze. Unfortunately there were some problems with building permits and bureaucracy so they cancelled it. But what about all the people that showed up? Well they still provided free booze. That was cool.

The place was not at all close to being finished. It still looked like a construction site on the inside. It reminded me of some rave I was at once in an old house that was being renovated except there were no glow sticks, pacifiers, stuffed animal backpacks or cracked-out kids dressed like Japanese manga characters. It was definitely and older crowd.

A long time ago I discussed getting my own radio show. It didn’t happen for a variety of reasons:
1. I forgot about it.
2. The guy I discussed it with forgot about it.
3. I didn’t have time.

I saw him at the party last night though and he said I can still do the show whenever I want. I just have to call him up and let him know when I have time. Ganz locker Alter. So hopefully I will get that going when things calm down at work.

I got linked to by BusinessWeek last week. Check it out!: Blogging’s Cure for the Expat Blues.

“ONLINE THERAPY. The big question: Is anyone reading Dispatches from France, An American in London, Notes from Germany, and the rest? Apparently so. Quoting the traffic counter at Dispatches from France, Vivi says she gets about 100 readers a day. Other expat blog writers report similar numbers.”

100 visits a day sounds about right. Thanks to this article I see I got about 400 visits a day last week and it has slowly tapered off. Those 15 Minutes are up.

I don’t really know why I started this blog. I’ve never considered myself a particularly good writer and I’ve never kept a journal longer than a few weeks. The website was here before the blog. I had to build it for a course I took at the nearby Uni. It is good to let my family and friends know what’s going on. That wasn’t necessarily my intention when I started it though. It’s cool though that it turned out like that. I started it after I had already lived here for a while. I was already past the culture shock and had pretty much gotten used to the language and customs.

As far as the blog goes I don’t care how many hits I get, I don’t care who reads it. On the other hand, I am careful about what I write about. Because of my visa situation I can’t really risk getting “Dooced”. Like most of the other expat bloggers, I have a lot of stuff going on in my life that I don’t/can’t blog about. It’s nobody’s business but mine and it would probably interest no one. The concept and thought of family, friends and strangers reading what I write is kinda cool though. It would be interesting if I got thousands of visits everyday, but I don’t consider myself that die-hard of a “Blogger” to promote the site and provide the sort of content that would keep that many people coming back.

I found this link over on Agitpropolis. I have it on good authority from an Irish colleague that this story is indeed true, as it was in her local paper.

Places I have been and lived

So I redesigned the whole site from scratch. It isn’t done but it is a good start. I’ll be poking around in the archive to make sure all the links work etc. Still needs some tweaking in some places. The best part is that there are no tables in the layout, just straight up CSS. That was a learning experience.

If anybody notices any wackiness with links, layout or such and such, please let me know.

Making some changes here on the server and to the template. Just hold on to your socks.

Bringing the Burrito to Berlin: “Berlin may be famous for its currywurst and döner kebab, but those old fast food standards might soon give way for snacking California-style, as two entrepreneurs aim to show Germany what burritos are all about.”

Must. Visit. Berlin.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned it here before but I tutor a friend’s step-son with his English. Like many 13 year olds, he listens to hip hop and rap music. Most of it is in English so he doesn’t really understand what is being said. Every once in a while he asks me what some some of the common hip hop vernacular means. This week we discussed “hood”, “homey”, “sucka” and “bling”.

The first three were easy to explain, but bling was difficult. In order to explain it to someone who is just starting to learn English you have to break it down to the basic concepts and build up from there.

I’m not sure he got it. I was laughing because I thought it was surreal having to explain the concept of Bling Bling and blingin’ to someone. Maybe I will give him the Hip Hoptionary for his birthday.

Fo’ shizzle, mah nizzle.