So long, and thanks for all the Wurst.

This is probably going to be my last post on Versicherung. I have been back in the States for a week now. It has been the typical rounds of doctors appointments shoved into very little time before I head back to school- which will commence on Wednesday morning.

I have found, just like when I got to Germany, that I have not been affected too much by 'culture shock', or in this case 'reverse culture shock'. This is not particularly surprising, since Germany and America are not that different culture-wise. The things that I have noticed the most since returning are little things: waiting for a host(ess) to seat you at a restaurant, having people bag your groceries (as much as I wish they would not), getting carded to buy alcohol, being able to pop down to the grocery at random hours, shopping on Sunday... The list could go on and on, but I will spare you. The things that I have found the most amusing is that I am having trouble responding to people in English- again little things- 'Thank you', 'Excuse me', etc... I noticed the other day at the pool that when a little boy asked me if the water was warm or not, I had to pause a second and think about what he asked and if he was speaking to me. Just like I had to when some one came up to me and asked a question in German when I was not expecting it. I do have to say that it is rather weird to be back here and not really feeling all that different from when I was in Germany. It feels exactly as it does when I am back at my parents house in between semesters.

Other than that, it has been the same old routine back at my parents house between semesters: getting used to Arizona time (which means I generally get up quite early...), pretending to clean up my room (in this case, unpacking and getting ready to pack again), watching the Twins on television (my favourite thing about my parents' house: they have the MLB Extra Innings package, so I get to watch ALL of the televised Twins games), working on my various crocheting and cross stitch projects, and last, but probably (definitely) the most frequent, getting yelled at for not helping out at a house that I do not feel as being my home, and getting into silly arguments with my father over stupid things, because I do not feel like I should do anything when I am on holiday. Granted, everyone else in the house has other views, since they do not see me as being on holiday when I am here. All understandable, since this is where they have lived for the last three years, but I have not lived here (in the long-term sense) and have no connections here except for the people living in this house. Sad, but unfortunately very true.

I have posted the remaining photographs that were taken in Europe. These do not yet include the picture my mother took with her camera when she was in Braunschweig, but I will eventually get them posted as well. These include pictures from our afternoon in Bad Harzburg, my day trip to Bremen, as well as my trip to Potsdam when I was in Berlin a couple weeks ago.

Overall, I will say that I had an amazing time in Braunschweig, despite the doldrums of the first couple months. Once I finally got settled and met people and started getting out and doing things, things evened out and I started having a good time. It was really sad saying goodbye to everyone I met in Braunschweig, since it is likely that I will never see any of them again. I will hopefully see some of them again, since I will be in Europe again. I am hoping that I will be able to get some sort of job in Europe at some point. But at this point I am just concentrating on getting through my last year of engineering school, and the joys of the job search.

If you feel like continuing to read by mindless blathering, I am hoping to pop in every once and a while to my other blog, Fifth Dimensional Tesseract. Thank you for wasting/spending your time reading my blog. I hope that it was some times entertaining and insightful.

Until we meet again, EMH.

Auf Wiedersehen...

...well, not quite yet. I still have a bunch of photographs to upload and more writings to do. However, I do only have a hand full of hours left in Germany. I did not get a whole lot of sleep last night and I am looking at more than twenty solid hours of travel, before I am finally back at my parents house. Hopefully all goes well, and my large amount of luggage does not manage to kill me. Talk to you again on the other side of the Atlantic.

All things come to an end.

I am now in that weird transition period. The one that comes when one chapter of your life is closing and the next is starting, but the first has not quite ended yet and the next has yet to start. Because of this, I am bout to be in a some what melancholy mood for the next weeks. It was brought on today by a couple things 1) Today was my last day at work 2) Today was my last day of crew practice. It had not really hit me until I was on the way back from crew that I really liked the people here, and it will be sort of weird never seeing them again, after so much contact for so long. OK, yeah, I knew that I liked them, but I did not think that I would necessarily miss them when I go back to the States. I guess that times like these teach you things about yourself.

The next week will be filled with paperwork, packing, cleaning, and probably not a little boredom. And a lot of good byes and introspective thinking. I am nearly as nervous going back to the States as I was before coming to Germany. They (yes, the infamous they) say that you can never go home and even if I was not convinced of that fact after moving from the Cities, I am sure that I will find plentiful evidence of this when I get back to the States. This is all a part of living, so I expect that this will not be the last time that this will be illustrated to me.

But, after such a lugubrious post, I will end with some things that I am looking forward to:
- Reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on the flight home. (I am not even going to buy it until later this week, so there is no temptation to crack it open and get sucked in before I leave.)
- Seeing my Once and Future Flatmate and other friends again.
- Spicy food.
- An oven.
- Getting back to regular workouts. (Yeah, I am that mental.)
- Getting to watch a Twins broadcast on television, and not just the day games.

Two weeks...

... since I last wrote and until I leave for the States (well, a little more than two weeks left). It is pretty crazy that I have been here for six months and in a short time I will be back in the States and back at school. I am not really sure how I feel about it, but I am sure that you will find out when I do.

Things are winding down. I am in the midst of my two week study break from work. I had my Finite Elemente Methoden exam on Thursday. I will just have to say that I do not want to talk about it. Yes. It was that bad. I will be ecstatic if I managed to pull off a three on that one. (A three is sort of equivalent to a C in the States. Top is a 1.0.) The hope is that Flugmedizin will go a little better.

I was in München last weekend. It was a lot of fun- driving on the Autobahn at 240 km/h. (You can do the math if you want to know what that is in mph.) And that was just getting there. Photos from our visit to the Olympic Park can be found in the München link. It does not seem like I took any other photos. But most of those were at Biergartens anyway. Funny story: We had just arrived at our hostel and were on our way out again when I saw this guy who sort of looked familiar and was giving me a funny look. Turns out that some of the other Purdue engineers in the country, who are studying at Karlsruhe, were visiting Berlin at the same time that I was, and we were staying in the same hostel. Pretty coincidental.

Next weekend I am going up to Berlin (yes, again), but this time I will be heading out to Potsdam on Saturday and then probably the Zoo on Sunday. I am looking forward to it. And I will be sure to post an absolute ton of pictures. I love Potsdam and Sansouci is one of the most gorgeous parks that I have ever seen.

As well as the München photographs, I have posted the pictures from the Staffelrudern in Hamburg. I have also added to the album called Nature. I took pictures on the way to the Thune (as far as I can tell, think the fish) boathouse am Mittlandkanal, as well as the boathouse and Kanal itself. (More water and boats. Believe it.)

More pictures

Sorry, I have been neglectful again. Things are crazy busy. But, I have taken the time to finally upload photos from the Ostsee camping trip (as usual, accessible by the link on the left). And, if you are at all familiar with my photography style, you will be surprised to find out that there are actually people in these pictures.

I was in Hamburg for the Staffelrudern yesterday. That was cool. I will eventually get those photos uploaded as well.

But hopefully these will keep you occupied until I can sit down and actually write something.

Finally France

OK, I am finally getting to tell you all about my visit to Paris a couple weeks ago. Overall it was quite interesting to be in Paris, the city much proclaimed by many. I have to say that I was not particularly impressed. I do not know why that is. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that I do not really speak the language, or because so many people told me that they did not really like Paris Or perhaps it is because I do not have as much of a connection with Paris as I do with, say, London, New York City and Berlin. The Once and Future Flatmate said that she was not surprised since the two of us ‘tend toward the Anglophilic side, and you can’t love both France and holly old England, can you?’ As true as that might be, it would have been nicer to have liked the city a little better. Oh well, you cannot like every city you meet, even if it is in Europe.

Other than that, Betsy and I are quite lazy when it comes to being tourists. We did all of the requisite Paris tourism things: Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Louvre, Champs Élysées, Arc de Triomphe, the Tuileries. I have to say that Notre Dame was quite cool, I had no idea that it was on a little island bit in the middle of the Seine. The river– surprise, surprise– was the highlight of the trip for me. We spent quite a while walking along the Seine, and it was quite nice.

One amusing thing is that in Place de la Bastille there is a restaurant named Indiana. Of course I took pictures of it. The pictures, by the way, are now uploaded and can be accessed by the link call ‘Paris’ to the left. I may or may not ever get around to annotating the pictures, but, if you ask me, most of them are pretty explanatory. Either you will recognise the landmark; or if it is a gardeny area (and by gardeny, I mean tan gravel – probably another reason why I was not too enchanted with Paris was the lack of a nice green garden to sit on, except at the Tower), it is probably the Tuileries; and if it is a body of water, it is the Seine. Another note about the pictures, if you bother looking at them, you can see that I was up to my usually trying to be artsy antics. Sorry in advance. I also seem to have been quite taken with the Tour d’Eiffel, despite that fact that it is really quite ugly.

There is not much else to tell about our weekend in Paris. As I said, we are sort of on the lazy side. Keep an eye out for the next post, whose subject will be the week before last, while I was on holiday while my mother was here.

Sometimes you wonder what people were thinking.

Then again, sometimes you really, really, really do not want to know. At all. I know I said that I would start with France, but do you remember hearing about that American tourist who decided to go for a walk in Nürnberg without any clothes on? He claimed that he thought that Germans did that all the time. At the time I wondered where this guy had gotten that crazy idea. Well, maybe he had talked with the guy that was seen this afternoon walking along the Mittland Kanal northwest of Wenden-Braunschweig. He was not wearing a stitch of clothing. Luckily he was on the opposite side of the Kanal from where three guys and I were rowing. The boys, of course, thought that it was hilarious. And I, naturally, thought that I am always the lucky one. (Read: Oh my God, I think I have been scared for life... again.)

Two weeks later...

Yes, It has been two weeks since I last posted. Sorry to the very small un-named number of you that rely on this site to pass your boredom (though I really am not sure how this blog qualifies for boredom alleviation- more like boredom induction) while at various activities (read: work). It has been a busy couple of weeks, and I promise to start bringing this site up to date. For a quick overview of the things that I will be updating you on: Paris, Mother's visit, second trip to Berlin and a ton of new (and old) pictures that I have not gotten around to putting up online yet. So, be patient for just a few more days, and this weekend (which is free for once) you will get your fix of my larks on the continent.

Am Ende der Maifeiertage

Today is the last of the Maifeiertage (May – mostly Easter-related – holidays). Since the first of May, there have been three holidays: Maifest, Himmelfahrt, and Pfingsten (May Day, Ascension, and Pentecost). Since Maifest and Himmelfahrt occurred on a Tuesday and a Thursday, respectively, they also included Brücketage – bridge days between the weekend and the holiday, that, while not officially off, most everyone took off anyway. So, in summary, the month of May had two four-day weekends and one three-day weekend.

Since this is the last official day off in a while, I figure I should stop procrastinating (by now you should know that this is one of my more prominent qualities) and really say something of substance on this forum, instead of the random bits of fluff that I have been posting lately – all of those holidays are hard work, and do not lead to a lot of free time for extensive blogging. Speaking of which, I will eventually get around to uploading the pictures that were taken at Maifest of the burning man, etc, and other random pictures that have been taken, most notably, at the Autostadt in Wolfsburg, where I went on the last holiday weekend. I also hope to get some pictures of the Bootshäuser (Boathauses) and around the city at some point, but it had been scattered thunderstormy for the last couple weeks, so I never get around to getting out to do it…

Just to bring you up to speed on things here: I have just about two months left before I head back to the States. I am just about done with my main project for work, and have a large internal report to look forward to writing in the next month in a half. Crew is going crewingly, last week we were able to get out in an eight and it felt really good to be sweeping again after months of scull (there might still be hope that I will not lose my newly found stroke from last semester). This week is Excursionswoche (Excursions week), hence there is no class and I am off to Paris on Wednesday and then my mother will be coming in on Monday for a week. (I have twenty Urlaubstage – (paid) holiday days – I might as well use them.) Then I am back to the grind, finishing up the last bits of things that need to be done before I leave.

Better than a Ham Sandwich

If any of you are familiar with my novice coach's favourite sentence 'A ham sandwich could row that seat better than you.' (He had some other favourites, but they were not sentences, nor repeatable.) Then you might be interested to know that a Ham Sandwich is running as a write in canidate for Prince William County (Virginia) Commonwealth Attorney. Saying that Hamilton 'Ham' Sandwich, Esq. 'will perform with the same skill and tenacity as the current office holder, and best of all is incapable of engaging in personal vendettas against political enemies.'

Pachelbel

Here is a fabulous rant on Pachelbel's Canon on YouTube.

PS: You would think that I would post more with this four day weekend. Oh well, maybe I will get around to writing something tomorrow.

Boiler Up!

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

To the Purdue University Crew Team, for an outstanding preformance at the Dad Vail's Regatta this year! We swept the Varsity Eight Races, and the WJV boat got bronze in their race! I wish I could have been there in person, instead I was here in Deutschland following the results getting posted on the web. Here is an article on row2k.

This is a Technical University you say?

If you are ever wondering what kind of university you have found yourself at, the easiest way to figure it out is to go to the nearest wall with flyers posted on it, and look for something similar to this:

No matter where you are, what country or language you speak, there is one thing that is ubiquitous when a bunch of geeks are in close proximity to each other.

One perspective...

The following excerpt was taken from an article in Slate about an obscure correlation between presidential popularity and the strength of the dollar (both of which, at the moment, are quite weak):

"The dollar today may buy fewer BMWs and Prada shoes than it did in 2002,
but it buys about the same amount of Chinese-made microwaves, T-shirts, and
toys. And yes, Americans who suddenly find travel to Europe prohibitively
expensive might be expected to come home enraged. But most of these
travelers already hated Bush. An August 2004 poll showed that voters with passports preferred John Kerry to Bush by a whopping 23-point margin."

This is another illustration of something that I have noticed for quite a while, and since living in Europe, I have found even more striking: the people more likely to travel abroad are the ones who are the most dissatisfied with America-- be it politics, culture or whatever. You will very rarely find your stereotypical American living in Europe, for any amount of time. Some of them might do a little travelling, but they are still more likely to stay at home. Which is one reason why it is so sad that they are the American stereotype. But, as with all stereotypes, they are the ones that stick out and, hence, are the one that are noticed as opposed to their quiet, respectful, culturally oriented counterparts. All of the Americans that I have met, who are living in Europe, lean strongly to the left and are just as appalled at the state of American politics and foreign policy as the majority of Europe.

In my opinion, this can all be traced to the fact that the people who choose to live abroad are more open to foreign cultures and people, and are not impressed with themselves in the world as American citizens, but find more value in being citizens of the world. Which leads to Europeans saying (as one of my colleagues has complained) that they never get any real Americans, just the ones who do not act like how a lot of Europeans think that Americans should act.

Informationsaufnahmemöglichkeit

The above is a word taken from my Flugmedizinvorlesung (Flight Medicine lecture), and really, in the scheme of things, it is not that long at all. One thing that you must know about Germans, is that they love to make up words. It is quite acceptable German to stick together a bunch of words and make a new word out of them. This is so de rigueur, that they have their own word for ‘made-up words’: das Kunstwort, which itself is a compound word of Kunst ‘art’ and Wort ‘word’. That direct translations just about sums up about how Germans think of making up words: To them, it is an art form.

In case you are wondering, the title word is made up of Information ‘information’, Aufnahme ‘reception’ and Möglichkeit ‘possibility/potential’, which renders it as being a really fancy way of saying the possibility of receiving information. This word could have been taken farther, as the phrase that it came from was Informationsaufnahmemöglichkeit des Menschen ‘the potential for receiving information of people’ when it could easily have been Menschensinformationsaufnahmemöglichkeit ‘the human potential for the reception of information’. All of that, packed into one word. Ah, the power of Deutsch.

PS: Today is Cinco de Mayo (thin’ko day My’o, as opposed to sink’o day Mayo, since I am learning Spanish from a Spaniard and not a Mexican… though it is a Mexican holiday…) and Derby Day (der’by day, as opposed to dar’by day, but, since the Queen is visiting, the latter might be acceptable... though it is Kentucky...).

Addendum

Joe Mauer: Hot catcher or hottest catcher?

I had to share this with all of you. Speaking of the Chairman, did I ever tell you about the time that Joe Mauer dated this a girl on my swim team? Let's just say that his taste in females was not too great then, and it does not seem like it has improved since....

Walpurgisnacht, Hexennacht, Maifest and Beltane

I have finally gotten around to writing this post, which has been rattling around in my brain for a few days. One of the reasons why I am finally getting around to posting it is because I am procrastinating studying for Español and Flugmedizin. But, since I have had a four day weekend, which continues tomorrow, I am not too worried about having time in which to study.

Reason for the four day weekend: Today is 30 April, which means tomorrow is 1 May, which means that tonight is Walpurgisnacht (the Night of the Witches) and tomorrow is Maifest. This also means that tomorrow is German Labour Day, which means NO WORK. And since no one goes to work tomorrow, no one goes into work today. Which, unfortunately for hungry students short on time, also included the main Mensa (cafeteria). There is a decent history of Hexennacht here, but, in summary, the witches are supposed to be meeting on the Brocken (the highest mountain in the Harz) and do whatever it is that they do. The most notable thing about this is that the Brocken is not very far from here and Braunschweig is the closest larger city. So this is a fairly big deal here. My student residence has a huge Maifest party, so I am probably not going to get too much sleep tonight (whether I go to the party, or not).

Of course, if you had not made the connection, Walpurgisnacht is named after the saint Walpurga (there is a good Anglo-Saxon name for you) and it is, incidently, also the name for the first section of Goethe’s Faust. Which (the saint, not Faust) also leads to the fact that it is a catholicised version of a old pagan festival, known as Beltane in the Celtic world (and lot of other things elsewhere) and symbolises the final coming of spring and the triumphing of light over dark (as opposed to Samhain (Hallowe’en) which is the beginning of winter, where darkness over comes the light).

But, what is really comes down to, is a built-in excuse for the Germans to have a huge party and not go to work for a couple days to recover from said party.

In other news, as there always seems to be some: everything is coming along smoothly, class is class and work is work and crew is crew. One thing of note is that I have decided to expand my blogging, and, once I am back in the States, I hope to continue this blogging thing. So, in preparation for that, I have made another blog by the name of Fifth Dimension Tesseract, which you can find a link to here. The first entry at that site explains a little bit of my goals for that blog, so you can go there and read it, if you would like. If you have any other ideas for topics on the blog or anything else, let me know.

In sporting news: After having a terrible week last week, the Twin’s bats came alive and they took two games out of three in Detroit. Hopefully they will keep up the good work after their off day today.

And you are lucky, oder? I managed to keep today’s post to just over five hundred words, instead of over one thousand as I have been recently.

When U was spelled V, how could they tell the difference between U and V?

I am sure that you all have been wondering the exact same thing. If you have any theories, feel free to share.

As you are all aware, I am sure, this last week has been a rough one. As I have said before, events like these show us how connected we are. It also reminds us to keep our friends and family close, and when you are far away from both, it makes it double difficult to deal with some of the reactions; especially when the media is chock-a-block with coverage so you cannot get away. As the days progress, I find that I am listening to music a lot more than I had been previously and I only listen to a little bit of the news before I have to turn it off. And that is just the news magazines. I have not been able to listen to any of the interview/talk shows on NPR at all.

While I was off in emotional numbness, many things have been going on here, so I figure I will bring you up to speed:

Crew has started with a bang, rowing five days of the week. This is very exciting, since it gets me out of the flat more in the evening. (Though this also means that I am not quite as likely to sit down and write a post, do not worry, I will work on it… not that I have ever really been that regular.) The Twins managed to sweep the Mariners and then go down to Kansas City and loose the series to the team that is pretty close to an automatic last in the division. I am now taking beginning Spanish as well as Flugmedizin (roughly, flight medicine, but you knew that, right?).

The circumstances of my taking Flight Medicine is a little round about. I do not know if I had vented any of my frustration at my academic advisor at Purdue to you, but to sum it up, he ignored me for two months until I got my mother to call him. It all comes down to the fact that I had been trying to figure out if I needed to take any classes while I was here for two (TWO!) months. And he never replied. Then, after I ‘pulled out the big guns’ (direct quote from Prof Wms.) and finally broke the stalemate, he tells me that it would be nice if I did take one class here. I nearly lost it. I had been trying to get this information out of him for two months and he finally tells me a week and a half after the semester starts. Let us just suffice to say that I was royally teed (speaking of royalty, did anyone not hear that Prince William and Miss Kate Middleton broke it off and then about Willie’s boozing spree? If so, you win a prize for being able to pick you media outlets a lot better than I…). Anyway. This news led me to frantically figure out what class I should take (that had been another issue, nothing was really fitting), which led me to discuss it with my ‘overseer’ at work, which led us to finding a little class called Luft- und Raumfahrtmedizin—did I mention that we found this class at 1:30 Friday afternoon…when the class started at 2:05? And I was at the airport? Well, let’s just say that that was the quickest bike ride to campus that I have even pulled off. The normally thirty minute route took me less than twenty. All of the rushing turned out to be not needed, since it ends up that the class will actually start at 2:30 (and go until 5:30—long time for German listening). And that is how I came to take Flight Medicine, which, luckily for me, only started last Friday (a week after other classes) because it only meets every other week, because it is taught by a doctor who works for Lufthansa, and has to come down to Braunschweig special to teach the course. So I did not miss any class, and it only meets twice a month.

Now that you have heard my rant about Prof Wms., what else is there that I can relate to you? Mario moves to Berlin this week. And if he does not get his act together he is going to leave the things I borrowed from him when Dad was here here. His sleeping bag is going to do him a lot of good on my book shelf. Spring is really here. The wild flowers and later flowering bushes are popping up everywhere. Including the dandelions. Hopefully I will be able to get out and take some pictures of the lovely greenery this weekend.

I am sure that you do not want to read any more of my rambling at the moment, so I will leave you with the Worldwide (but really Europe-wide) Security Status Report:

The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent terrorist threats and have raised their security level from ‘Miffed’ to ‘Peeved’. Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to ‘Irritated’ or even ‘A Bit Cross’. Londoners have not been ‘A Bit Cross’ since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies all but ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from ‘Tiresome’ to ‘A Bloody Nuisance’. The last time the British issued ‘A Bloody Nuisance’ warning level was during the great fire of 1666.

Also, the French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from ‘Run’ to ‘Hide’. The only two higher levels in France are ‘Surrender’ and ‘Collaborate’. The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France’s white flag factory, effectively paralyzing the country’s military capability.

It is not only the English and the French that are on a heightened level of alert. Italy has increased the alert level from ‘Shout Loudly and Excitedly’ to ‘Elaborate Military Posturing’. Two more levels remain: ‘Ineffective Combat Operations’ and ‘Change Sides’.

The Germans have also increased their alert state from ‘Disdainful Arrogance’ to ‘Dress in Uniform and Since Marching Songs’. They also have two higher levels: ‘Invade a Neighbor’ and ‘Lose’.

Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual, and the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels.

The Spanish are all excited to see their new submarines ready to deploy. These beautifully designed sibs have glass bottoms so the new Spanish navy can get a really good look at the old Spanish navy.

It is not terribly charitable and not really even all that true (even stereotypically) to some of the countries that it mocks. However, the first bit and the last two bits just about make up for the other bits. To fully disclose, I found this lying about the printer room at work (incidentally, also my office) and it was, in my opinion, obviously written by an American, or some one quite Americally oriented. And that is not just because the spellings are American and not British.

Another Update....

I found out today in an email from the Purdue Crew President, that one of the victims at Virginia Tech, Kevin Granata, was not only an alumnus of Purdue, as I said on Tuesday, but he was also an alumnus of the Purdue Crew team... Best wishes to all of the families and people more directly connected to the massacre than I, but this just goes to show how closely this world is intertwined. Also, good luck to both the Va Tech crews and Purdue crews this weekend at SIRA's. Boilers: Kick some major SIRA's butt. BOILER UP!

Something to Lighten the Mood a Bit...

I found this online, much like all the others of its kind, but still quite amusing.

You've studied abroad in Germany if:

1. You have sorted your garbage into at least 3 garbage cans and you know the difference (or should know the difference) between "Gelbe Säcke" and "Restmüll".
2. You have ever drank: a Maß, Meter or Stiefel of beer.
3. You have ever had or not had "lust" to do something.
4. You get excited that CNN is in English.
5. You know what a Döner is, and you've eaten more than one in the same week from a different "Imbiss" each time.
6. You've been to Oktoberfest.
7. You've worried before about catching "the last Strassenbahn" home.
8. You've ever been stressed out at the grocery store while checking out, and have noted that you will never take "baggers" for granted ever again.
9. You've enjoyed the ablility to walk down the street/ride the strassenbahn/hang out in public
drinking a beer or other alcoholic beverage.
10. You've watched the Simpsons in German and hated it.
11. You've ordered more than one Kugel of Eis a day...everyday...
12. You've laughed at someone trying to say "squirrel".
13. You know what a "Klo" is and you've gone "auf" one.
14. You know what the "German Stare" is.
15. You know what DB stands for.
16. You've ever explained to someone what a "pinata" is.
17. You've ever visited the local gas station on a Sunday because it's the only thing open.
18.You know the difference between Milka and Ritter Sport.
19. You know what a WG is, and have lived in one.
20. You've ever been totally confused on how to open any and all windows/doors/locks.

Sad, but pretty accurate. I will leave it to your imagination to decide which of these has befallen me...