Biker-Mädchen

I don't have time for a long entry...but I want to post this so people know I'm still alive.

It was the second cold (relatively) and rainy day in a row. I decided that I could suck it up and bike in the rain, or I could shop and spend more money.

My frugal side won.

So, I rented a bike online. It took about 45 minutes to figure out the reservation system. You have to reserve through your mobile phone. Fortunately, when the whole deal didn't work for me, there was an English speaking customer service rep to walk me through the process.

So, here's my bike.


It cost 1 Euro an hour, and I think it was just an ad for a cinema. But what do I know.

Victor has a bike, a very fancy bike, but it is a boys bike. I have crotched the beam enough to know that I was NOT going to risk it on vacation.

I did take his super safety-conscious helmet with me. Bonus--it's warm!


It even has earflaps.

I'm having a kind of accident prone kind of day. I walked in front of a train, a car, and was honked at by another train. They have so many crosswalks here. Some for bikes. Some for pedestrians. Some for both. It's very confusing.

There is a separation in many places for walkers and bikers.

I took my bike to the famous bike path along the Elbe River. The path goes for miles and miles and miles.

Here was where I happened to come upon the path.


After carrying my bike down several sets of stairs, I resumed my ride. I saw scenes like this:

They have a few onion topped buildings from Russian times.

More later...

For immature audiences only, part 3

It's not people of Walmart. But it could be similar.

I can tell a European male by how he wears his pants. American men and boys wear theirs down on their hips.

German men wear them like this.


Ouch! I should think that hurts!


Don't worry, Victor has asked me to refrain from taking pictures of men's butts in the future. He says if I continue, even in the name of research, he will take similar pictures, but not of men.

*sigh* Fine.

Eis in the the Haus

The freezer is now stocked with ice creme (eis). It's also called "softee" or "softeis".

I am realizing that yet another reason this trip is such an amazing opportunity is that I'm able to experience it, just a little bit, like a resident rather than a tourist.

I understand why my student who knew NO English, said to his ESL teacher, "No more English" and refused to work with her. I come back from being out and about and turn on International CNN just to hear English. Though it is British English with 'shedules' and constant coverage of Murdoch's hearings before Parliament.

So, let's take a look at shopping here.

First, the carriage.

To use a carriage, you have to put 1 Euro (like $1, only worth more) into the slot. That pushes the little lock out. When you're done shopping, you put your carriage back neatly, and use the key to push the Euro back out. So you get the money back. And there are no cart retrieval employees, or abandoned carts floating around.

(The Euro coins are like this: .01, .02, .10, .20, .50, 1, and 2. Quite frankly, it's a lot of stinkin' change to carry.)

You know what I haven't seen? At all? MACARONI AND CHEESE! I did find milk, but no skim milk, so I'm still out of luck there.

Here are some products.

Yeah, um...don't we call them "hamburger buns" after Hamburg, Germany? So why are they "American Buns"?

Plus, this county is all pork, all the time. So they really are HAMburgers.


I have no clue what these are. They were in the freezer case. Maybe a frosted cookie?



This is a bar table that you can buy at the grocery store. Not a card table, not a folding table. A bar table. I was at a restaurant last night where the menu was eight pages long. Only one page had food. They like to drink here.

When you check out, the cashiers are normally sitting and just sliding things across the scanner. You bag the groceries yourself, and you have to bring your own bags. If you don't bring a bag and you can't carry everything in your arms, you have to buy a bag. They start at .10 Euros.

So here I am, trying to pay with a card, and the non-English speaking person shows me her card screen, says "Visa" and shakes her head sympathetically no. I'm frantically digging through my copious amount of change and paltry selection of bills, and trying to put my card away. The men behind me are getting restless.

She was very kind, and tried to help me throw my groceries in the cart. I pulled the cart out of the way and bagged my items.

Before you leave, you pass a pork station (OK, it's like pork-a-palooza under heat lamps, schitzel, wieners, salami, pork patties, breaded pork patties, etc.) and a bakery. I figurde I deserved a couple of chocolate croissants for all that work, so I purchased them too.

To and from the grocery store, I passed this:

(Avert your eyes, Puritans! I couldn't. It was there for all to see.)



And also him:


Chuck Norris is everywhere. In random locations along buildings (they love posters and grafitti). On t-shirts: 16 pictures of him looking just like this with the caption: the 16 faces of Chuck Norris. He's WAY more popular here. Some sort of pop culture hero. I do not understand.

For immature audiences only, part 2

Before I found the Hygiene Museum, I wandered around endlessly. I was on a mission for three things today:
*The Green Vault museum--it's supposed to be full of inventions that some prince commissioned back in the 12oos, possibly while smoking crack.
*The Hygiene Museum
*Diet Coke
*Something to eat

The "info" kiosk in Aldstadt (old city) was staffed by two women. Neither spoke English. I finally got them to understand "Green Vault", they said it in German and I recognized the sounds from my reading. They directed me. I found it. It is closed on Tuesdays.

I took the tram out to a stop called "Hygiene Museum". And wandered for about an hour looking for the place.

Diet Coke? That was 2.5 hours later. Something to eat? Even later than Diet Coke. A paltry chocolate truffle ice cream scoop. Honestly, these people are thin because they ride bikes, their portions are tiny, and their food is gross. In my humble opinion, of course.

At least I could find things to laugh at.

Here's another condom ad:

Oh yes, the old bra hanging off the mirror of the VW bus.


No, it doesn't say assfart! It means "exit".



Yep, it says "Bier Bar "ASS"'

And ass has the same meaning in the translator. I remember Old Milwaukee and Schlitz being referred to a "butt beer", but it was never a compliment.

Finally, an ad from my current favorite movie. The one that literally gave me an asthma attack in the theatre.


The name of the movie is Bridesmaids. Brautalarm translates to "brew alarm". But I still love the ad!

Dresden's answer to our Paul Bunyan in Bangor

This is what greets you at the Hygiene Museum, which is supposed to be the leading museum about the human body in the world.

Unfortunately, it is almost exclusively in German.

And it should be called the "Sex and Childbirth" museum, because that's what it really is. They're much freer with sharing here. Models of body parts (you know which ones) with warts, lesions, etc. I'd tell you what the diseases are specifically, but they were written in German.

There was a game where you try to get two sexual partners to, um, "peak" at the same time. A mom was watching her son and daughter play it. I felt like a Puritan.

There was a *leather* sculpture showing the moment of birth. I almost let out a Spongebob style scream. You know, the kind that echos through the ocean.

Seriously, next to nothing on muscles, the nervous system, skeletal system, blood, respiration, etc. Fortunately no scatology.

Even I couldn't take pictures of most of the exhibits. I'll share what I could photograph without barfing or giggling or turning completely red faced.

The upside to not speaking German is that they don't even bother to ask me to put my camera away. :)


An iron lung. Can you imagine living this way, or having your child in one of these?



I'm sending this picture to Seamus. He needs to stand up straight for both his health, and so that other kids will stop calling him "Greg Heffley" a la Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

Those are all the pictures I could take in the regular exhibit.

Paul Bunyan should have been a clue.

Finally, I reached the visiting exhibition about sports and the body. Yanno, thinking there might be some things about gymnastics.

Not much.

At first I was optimistic...

I'm guessing that the small one is a gymnast. They used famous athletes for some of them. Like the tracksters and big guy are all Americans. The gymnast looks a little bit Russian/Romanian, but it isn't Alina Mustafina, who is the best gymnast right now.

Since the Americans won the last two all around titles at the Olympics, I don't know who else they would use, besides Mustafina, who is recovering from a torn ACL at last year's Worlds. (What? More information than you wanted to know? You'll thank me in 2012 when, if she can return, Mustafina will be a huge name.)

The only other gymnastics related thing I could find was this:


An old school pommel horse. Yay.

Did you notice that there are only four pictures?

For immature audiences only

If you are easily offended, look away.
If you are an older relative, look away. I will disappoint you. (Yes Mom, I know exactly what "Your blog is...interesting" means in your email.)
If you find middle school humor boorish or obnoxious, look away.

Remember, we tend to adopt the behaviors of the age group with whom we teach.

So:
Bwahahahaha! Yes, I bought them. They're basically alphabet chocolate cereal surrounded by chocolate coating. Not exciting.

This is better.

In public.
At the train stop.


Yeah, that's a ladder up to a bed with underwear dripping down it.

See where it says "balken biegen" in the upper left hand corner? That translates to "bending beam". I got nothing. BUT, there is what is unmistakenly an unwrapped condom over the little checkbox. Bwah!

Another ad at the same train location is encouraging people to see "The Mouse and the Elephant", a kids play.

Milk

For the love of all that is good and holy in this world...

WHERE IS THE SKIM MILK?

OK, I know they have cows. So why only soy milk? No refrigerated milk. I miss milk the most.

I've had a chocolate croissant every day. I'm kind of getting sick of them. The Diet Coke tastes funky. I'm drinking it, but drinking more water. Which is good, I guess.

I bought another loaf of bread, but I left it one the train, apparently. The first one was kind of yucky. But I DID find what I *think* is turkey breast: putenbrust.

Even the fruit is odd. The melons are the wrong color, and the grapes have seeds.

And the sad part is that I won't even lose weight, because I'm just eating anything that is "schokolade". Or bread. Or ice cream. But no milk.