Off to the Vaterland

The Journey

Well, contrary to that popular slogan, my journey really wasn’t all too exciting/fun. There were lots of delays due to bad weather in Philadelphia and Munich so I ended up spending a good 24 hours alternately lounging around in airports and then sitting stiff as a board, fully upright, as not to have to touch the people sitting next to me on the plane, all the while maxing out my credit cards on the Sky Mall catalogue on the airplane phone. The highlight was talking to a woman on the Houston to Philadelphia leg of the trip about the woes of cat ownership with specific regards to their finicky urinary systems.

The Family

While here I am staying with the Fischer Family, who are friends of friends of friends of my mothers. Not that I have more than one. I just don’t know how to punctuate that. Anyway, Frau Fischer is the matriarch of the bunch and she has three children. Two are grown and out of the house with their own families, but one, Maxie, is my age. We get along very well with each other and she has taken me out to see the city, go to events, and meet her friends, who have all been very nice. Then there are the two dogs: Ola, the Cairn Terrier, and Schultze, the mutt, through whose barking I have learned a plethora of ways to tell a person (or anything that responds to commands, for that matter) to ‘shut up’.
The food she makes is very good, but much heavier than what I am used to. My first meal here was actually Turkish doner, which consisted of lamb and vegetables all wrapped up in bread. Little Turkish fast food eateries can be found everywhere. The second day I was here, Frau Fischer asked if I wanted to make something I'd usually eat at home. Unfortunately, they had no Cheerios at the house, so I was unable to make my specialty (Cheerios smothered in honey with a dash of cinnamon, which I lovingly refer to has ‘cereal stew’), so I instead made quesadillas, albeit with gouda cheese, turkey slices and ‘california wraps’. Needless to say, the Fischers will think twice before asking me to cook another meal. If anyone has any good, old-fashioned, tried and true, easy (I stress this part) recipes highlighting American (even better, Texas) cuisine, I encourage you to forward them along to me. Of course, I may not be able to get all of the ingredients and I’ll have to convert all the measurements, but I’ll give it my darndest for sure.

The City

Dresden is a gorgeous city. Words cannot due justice to the things I have seen, so expect pictures soon. Today I went on a bike ride (everyone rides a bike here and Maxie’s brother was nice enough to lend me his during my stay) through the park and I was absolutely blown away. I kept thinking to myself how much Lady Bird Johnson would enjoy seeing it all. The city is over 60% green, not meaning that everyone has a solar panel to operate their microwave oven, but rather that that much of the city is made up of parks and forests. There is a tram that connects the whole city, but I plan to ride the bike for the most part. A few days ago, Dresden held its annual celebration of itself. There was a festival and thousands upon thousands of people. I listened to German music, ate German food and got to speak to a lot of German kids. The weather here is also very nice – upper 60’s, lower 70’s without much variation. Many things here remind me of Austin, so the culture shock wasn’t too incredible. Heck, I even went on a shopping trip to Czechoslovakia to buy cheaper groceries just like grandma goes to Mexico when she’s getting low on tequila.
German is, of course, spoken by everyone here and it’s taken me a while to get used to their dialect, which, Maxie claims, is scorned and ridiculed by the whole rest of Germany. For more info. about Dresden, I recommend the Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dresden). If you scroll down to the bottom of the page, under the sections ‘Media, webcams and information’, you can click on 3D-Dresden-Panorama-sight, where I was standing just yesterday, and also Livecam Dresden downtown, which is an excellent overview of the city skyline. There are lots of cranes and I like to sit and watch them.

German Television

Many of the shows here are American and have been dubbed in German. I have to admit, it was a bit of a shock hearing Bill Cosby and his family argue about who’s getting the car for the evening in German, but I’m getting used to it and have been watching a good amount of television in order to become more familiar with the language. So far I have watched my fair share of ‘Three Angels for Charlie’ (Charlie’s Angels), the Disney cartoon ‘Big Break’ (Recess) and one of my favorites, ‘Listen…Who’s Hammering Over There?’ (Home Improvement). Frau Fischer and I also watch the German soap opera ‘Sturm der Liebe’ (Storm of Love) every day at 15:00. The show betters not only my German, but my understanding of the trials and tribulations of love, stemming from broken promises and resulting in broken hearts. The main character (who, by the way, has just left her husband due to his gambling problem) spends her days in front of what looks to be a giant chemistry set, boiling and mixing, looking like a mad scientist on the verge of some breaking discovery. It wasn’t until a few episodes in that I realized she was not, in fact, manufacturing amphetamines, but rather sniffing her concoctions for just the right scent. She makes perfume.

In Summary

That’s all for now. I’ll due my best to keep this updated in regards to all that I’m doing and seeing. Trips to Prague and Berlin are in their planning stages, but for now I’m very much enjoying getting to know Dresden and do not have much desire to zigzag all over Europe just because I am here. Pictures will be posted as soon as I (1) take them and (2) figure out how to post them. Feel free to comment!