Me and Germany's One-Month Anniversary

Happy anniversary to me! As of Saturday I've been here one whole month. Which doesn't mean I am any less homesick, or that my German is really any better than it was when I got here. I still get super nervous when someone kicks off a stream of fast German to me, and I still can't have a conversation.... but at least now if someone talks slowly I can understand what they are saying, espescially in "formal" places like supermarkets or at the train station. And I can follow conversations, even if I can't join in yet. So maybe.... just maybe... I'm improving. Slowly. :o)

Last Wednesday I finally made it to the Wedel pool. They apparently had a deal where if you go in the morning before 10am, it costs less. So I got there at 9:30am, only to discover that the deal is that you pay the price for one hour (€3.50) but you can stay as long as you like between 6:30 and 10am. Great, 6:30am sounds perfect for me (haha)! So then, the other options are one hour in the pool for €3.50 or three hours for €7.50 (ridiculous!), and there's no student price or options for 2 hours. I paid for an hour, but the lady was rude to me and the facilities weren't even what I was looking for: the pool was only 25metres long, had loads of screaming schoolchildren, and had no hot tub. It sucks because there's tons of pools in Hamburg, but to use them I have to take the train quite far. Oh well, they must have something better than the Wedel pool! Apparently many Wedelers expect them to go out of business soon, because they're so overpriced that nobody goes there.
Since I had actually spent my morning doing something other than sleeping, I decided to go somewhere in the afternoon... and because it was Valentine's Day, I thought it would be appropriate to go to the Erotic Art Museum of Hamburg! To get there, I had to walk through the red light district (the Reeperbahn) but it was well-lit with neon and there were lots of people so I felt very safe. When I got there, I was one of like 5 or 6 people in the museum... which made me feel more comfortable, I think, because even though I am so open-minded I still feel weird looking at erotica with other people around. How non-European of me! The collection at the museum was very good though. It was located in this very tall but slim building that was super old. My favourite was the basement, which had all these brick arches which made me think of a dominatrix's dungeon... but also, the basement housed all of the old erotic art. There were mayan carvings, sexual cartoons from the 18th and 19th centuries, photography by Man Ray, and a whole wall of really lovely 40s pin-ups. I really wanted to buy a poster with an old cartoon (how cool would that be?!) but they didn't have anything nice, at all. I might try to go back to the shop sometime during the tourist season, because they will probably have a better selection then. There was also this one picture I think would look awesome on a shirt, and Lisa suggested I draw it... although I'm afraid to draw right onto a shirt, because I haven't drawn in so long and you can't erase cloth pen, but she said the first mark is the hardest and after that it's a breeze! So I might see what I can do. The image is of a nude woman wearing a huge hat with feathers in it and riding a giant snail, whose shell is normal but whose neck and head is a penis with antennae. I find it very funny! The only irritating thing about the museum was that nothing was properly labelled, if it even had a label at all. So I have no idea what the title of this piece is, or who drew it.

On Thursday afternoon at the Wedel Library there was a Tea Hour with an author named Michael Terry. Since I spend at least an hour at the library almost every day, I figured I would attend this event even though it was in German. It was sponsored by a great tea company in Wedel, who provided three kinds of free tea and cookies, and who paid the author for his time. Michael Terry read from his book "Das Tee-Geheimnis", which means "The Tea Secret". It was a history of how tea found its way to Hamburg through this one family-run shipping company, but it was written like a novel which made it more interesting. I sat next to an elderly woman named Lilo who allowed me to use the informal "du" with her at the end of our conversation! Yay! She gave me her phone number and said when I get a telephone I should call her and we could have lunch together, because she also spends her days alone. She only speaks German, but she speaks quite slowly to me and chooses simple words so I don't get lost or feel stupid. It made me happy to make a friend, even if she isn't my age! But now I'm afraid to call her, because speaking only German on the phone is very different than speaking only German in person, where you can gesture and read other body language cues.

When the weekend finally came, I was so happy to have some time to hang out with Lisa! She woke me up around 10.30am and said, "Today is the perfect day for shopping!" so we headed to her favourite shopping district, Marktstraße. It is full of all sorts of little designers and imported stuff, so some of it is quite expensive, but in a very unique way. There was this one store called... get this... "Pussy Deluxe"! Even I felt scandalized! Lisa said the only reason they got away with it is because it's not in an English-speaking country, and I had to agree. Then I bought underwear from them, just because I could. Seriously, Pussy Deluxe! They gave me a cute box and some stickers and a ridiculous bag too, so I can have lots of things that say Pussy Deluxe! Ridiculous! At a different store I saw this pair of yellow shoes that I have to go back and get... they are so cute, I can't stop thinking about them.
We left quite late and had to stop in Altona (a lovely old district of Hamburg that was a seperate town until the 1930s) to buy some groceries for Sunday night. It was so crowded, the air was gross and hot, and it made Lisa exhausted and me angry. By the time we got back on the train we were so tired we pretty much napped all the way home... because when we got there, we had to quickly get ready to leave again! That evening we went to see "The Cat Empire", which is an amazing Australian band! They sound sort of like cuban-influenced reggae/jazz/ska, but there's really no way to categorize them. They sound so happy all the time that you just want to dancedancedance without stopping all night, but the concert ends before you're done dancing! Everyone there had huge shit-eating grins on their faces: a good sign for the band, I think! Plus, two of the band members had these little choreographed dances they did sometimes that were so cool we cheered our faces off! I definitely want to learn their choreographies. The venue was super nice too: Große Freiheit 36, which from the inside really reminded me of the Commodore. At one point they had us jumping in unison and for a moment I couldn't figure out why the ground wasn't bouncing me back up.... until I remembered that I wasn't at the Commodore and so there were no horsehair floors.
The concert ended early, around 10pm, so Lisa and I walked around the Reeperbahn, which is a tourist attraction in its own right with all of the neon lights and crazy party people. It's perfectly legal to walk around drinking alcohol on the streets in Europe, so I bought a Beck's "Green Lemon".... which is seriously the tastiest drink ever. It's a nice light beer mixed with lime juice, so it's sweet and fruity and soooo delicious. All I wanted to do was drink more of it... how dangerous! I will definitely miss it when I go back to Vancouver!

On Sunday evening, Lisa and I had Lenny's parents Petra and Ahrend over for dinner. They have done so much nice stuff for both Lisa and I that we absolutely had to thank them. I cooked the whole dinner pretty much, and Lisa made the dessert. We had roasted rosemary chicken, garlic mashed potatoes, caesar salad, carrots, and chocolate mousse. I was so proud of myself because I had everything hot on the table at almost the same time, and the chicken was so tender that I couldn't cut it because it was falling off the bones! Everyone stuffed themselves silly and we finished both chickens and all of the potatoes. The conversation was also fun, although I didn't talk much because most of it was in German (but I did follow most of it!). Ahrend even brought over some of this delicious organic red wine he has.... so maybe it was a good thing I couldn't join in the conversation, otherwise Petra and Ahrend might have noticed how much wine I drank! In all, the evening was a great success and Lisa and I feel much better now that we have shown our appreciation for Lenny's parents.

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