my little snowman scene (they're really into "scenes" here in germany... i'm trying to follow suit...)
merry christmas! happy hanukkah! or just happy holidays, if you are so inclined. i love the holiday season and i’m really excited about it.
okay, sorry, i just had to get that out. 🙂
my parents arrived yesterday morning (which is another thing i love about the holidays – being at the airport and seeing all the love and happy reunions) and up until then, my belly had remained looking like, well… as my close friend sashi lovingly said: it just looks like you ate a big burrito. but suddenly, it’s like the little doofus (or should i say little smarty-pants) new that it would be on display for all the grandparents in the coming days and decided to make himself a bit more noticeable.
my husband noted that this should be especially useful around christmas time, since we are moving soon and have to pay a deposit, buy furniture (as in, we have nothing because we’ve been renting “temporary” furnished apartments for the past five years [more to come on how excited i am about having my own house later]), buy stuff for baby, etc, etc and are a bit worried about where all this money is going to come from. he said that anytime the bill for dinner came or there was a question about us needing something, i should just sigh and rub my belly and say something like: ooh, the baby is moving a lot. i think i can feel it! or: i think i need to sit down. the baby must be growing a lot today, i’m feeling pretty tired. grandparents are total suckers, right?
anyway, so my little showoff must have heard this and thought: right, dad. i’ll play along! daddy is so proud.
unfortunately, my husband had to leave for england early yesterday morning, as his cousin passed away and the funeral was on thursday afternoon. the plan had been: my parents come thursday morning, we show them the christmas markets and hang out a bit and then saturday, we all drive up to england together. now, he’s already in england and the three of us (my parents and i) will still drive up saturday and meet him there.
i suppose it’s nice to get a bit of time just by myself with the folks, but i get a bit nervous about sleeping without him (what if something happens in the night or i feel something strange and need him to google it, or reassure me?), and he is sad about not being able to say goodnight and good morning to the baby every day.
at least, that’s what he said. then, of course, i tried to chat him last night before i went to sleep and his lovely, missing us, romantic response? i’m at the pub watching football with dan (my brother-in-law). so i said something else, you know, we’re missing you, we love you, somewhere along those lines… he said: tottenham 1 – 0 chelsea.
hmm.
the view from my bedroom window
i had been worried that it would snow and their plane would get delayed, but although it did snow pretty heavily the other night (at least from the perspective of this southern california girl), it has just been raining since, so it all washed away (or melted, i suppose is the correct term).
hopefully the rain will give us a break today as we visit some of the christmas markets in cologne and finish up our last-minute shopping. on saturday, we still plan to drive to england: through belgium and france, but we plan to do it quickly. then when we return, we might drive to portsmouth (so he can show me where he went to university) and then take the ferry across to brittany and drive back that way taking a bit longer, even.
while in england, we plan on seeing wicked, finally. my parents are really hard to shop for and finally i realized getting them something was the problem, but an experience is right up their alley! and what better experience than one i’ve been wanting to do for a long time, right?
so, again, happy christmas to everyone. i’ve got to run now because i’ve discovered i’m slightly anemic and have started taking these iron pills that the doctor prescribed, and frankly, they make me a little nauseous… which is great, because i obviously really missed that about the first trimester…
we arrived early friday morning, which of course meant that we were at the airport in cologne at stupid o’clock in the morning. james likes to be on time, which i can appreciate, but “on time” to him when we’re talking about flights means about two hours early. which sometimes is appropriate (like when flying to the us), but sometimes is just ridiculously early, especially since on this particular occasion there were only a few flights and the whole security process took about twenty minutes. and more importantly, once you pass through security, there’s no starbucks (or any cafés, really. definitely not one with soy milk).
we arrived in gatwick and he went one way (eu passports) and i went the other (non-eu passports), which was a bit sad as i realized that pretty much forever, we are going to be waiting in separate lines at passport control. it was also unfortunate this particular time because a huge flight from jamaica had just landed and so the non-eu passport line was extremely long.
i didn’t turn my phone on, because i didn’t really think it would work in england and, well, honestly, it didn’t even cross my mind. of course, after thirty minutes, james had called me three times, panicking, thinking that i’d been deported or held up somehow. and his mother was circling around outside, not wanting to park and not knowing how much longer it would take me. oops. i guess, seeing as how i almost was deported from england at one time (2006 – i’ll go into more detail one day), i can understand their concern.
we stopped off at his mum’s house, where she gave us our tent, sleeping bags, fold-up chairs, and insisted that i take a pair of wellies (which i would be immensely grateful for later). we packed it all up, remarking at the extraordinary amount of stuff it takes to go camping, and we were off.
of course, i had to be the navigator, which was a little bit scary as their directions, street signs and everything is completely different, not to mention the car itself is on the wrong side of the road (of course, as in EVERYTHING british vs. american, james very emphatically informs me that we are, in fact, the wrong ones).
we did arrive and the line (queue) was shorter than we had anticipated, which is always nice. the first thing we did when we got everything settled and chose our spot was to set up our tent. or, rather, we tried to set up our tent. i, of course, assumed that i knew what i was doing and just ploughed ahead, making mistakes, while james, ever practical, kept asking me tentatively, “um, shouldn’t we be reading the instruction manual”? unfortunately, we should have been. eventually, this lovely woman came up and offered her assistance, only rolling her eyes at us a bit (and rightly so).
james and our tent, which looks tiny and frankly, was...
on top of the fact that we had been given everything by james’s mum, we realized that we didn’t have a flashlight. luckily, we figured this out while it was still day out and we set off for the shop which i knew would be towards the entrance to the festival. james, having never been to a festival, was convinced there wouldn’t be such a shop. this time i was right – and thank god! i can’t imagine trying to find the porta potties in the dark, or worse, using a porta potty in the dark.
me and my panda licorice
what was even better about the transaction was that i had a taste of that lovely british condescension that i’ve only got from my husband of late and was obviously missing. after paying for the flashlight (torch, i mean, torch), i saw that they were selling panda licorice (the best black licorice ever) and so i asked james for a euro. of course, living in europe for the past five years, i’ve grown accustomed to saying “euro” and often say it in america as well, though i’m perfectly aware that we use the dollar, and not the euro. the gentleman selling his wares assumed that i was an ignorant american and with much more eye rolling than the woman who helped us with our tent, informed me in a quite sarcastic tone that they use the pound in england. i just smiled.
and then we entered the festival. to be honest, i didn’t know what to expect. the last outdoor festival i went to was coachella in 2003. and that was amazing. but this was different, it wasn’t just a music festival. and as we walked around, we
my little selfridges journal
could see that. there were, of course, stalls where you could buy bespoke items, but there were also stalls where you could make them. they had workshops in woodworking, jewelry making, pottery and many more. they had a few different lecture “halls” (as they were tents with unfinished wood benches, i’m not quite sure if hall is the right term), where you could hear varied talks, including those from the idler academy, such as john-paul flintoff speaking about his book, sew your own, where i learned how to sew my own journal.
in short, there was a lot going on. in the words of a very hungover argentinian, it was a festival for people who don’t like music festivals. or, as someone else put it, it was a middle-class festival. these are both things i overheard waiting in line for food, as, let’s face it, that’s really all i was interested in anyway. the latter i heard on that first day, and didn’t quite get her meaning, though james said it was obvious by the fact that they were selling the guardian.
they were right, in a sense. it was a “yuppie” festival – i mean, they had boutique camping, which james told me cost 500£ (i just couldn’t believe him – who would pay 500£ to camp when we were a close drive to oxford and you could stay in a nice bed and breakfast, rent a car, and still be better off) but it wasn’t just that, or maybe i’ve changed… because i DO like going to music festivals, and i loved this one. the music was fun: folksy, mostly, and a bit on the bizarre side at times, but very fitting and very calmly and strategically arranged throughout the festival. in theory, you could have been there and completely filled your day with activities, without actually seeing any music, yet at the same time, there was always someone playing somewhere.
chair in the "holistic sanctuary" (right?)
what struck me the first day, and maybe it’s because i hadn’t got a lot of sleep the night before and i’d hurt my foot, so i wasn’t in the best mood (which always leads to me judging myself too harshly), is how different i am now from what i expected myself to be. and, of course, neither of those things are bad: i love who i am now and i am that person because of who i was and the choices i made in the past (blah, blah). but i think my life could have headed in a very different way. i looked at all the creative, interesting, bright people all around me, and i felt like i could have been that. now, of course, i’m completely judging by the cover, here. those people could have been absolutely dull and insipid and i might have been taken in by their costume (which would not have been the first time), but i was envious. and not of them, per se, but of myself as i could have been.
i even got annoyed at james, blaming him (completely unfairly) for my transformation into a more boring person. i could have created a costume for the midnight masked ball, as some did, or brought glitter to decorate my face and body. i mean, there was a time when i wouldn’t leave the house without glitter (sadly, i’m totally being serious here). i suppose i felt a bit like i was missing out on some of the fun and the person who i thought i would become, would have just tore up that festival – in fact, in my wildest imaginings, maybe i would have been presenting, or involved somehow.
the person i was in the past, had she taken another path to “adulthood” could still have dyed black hair and facial piercings, or could have started a zine, or could have been a journalist or, just in general, i could have been in a more alternative fringe culture. instead, what i am is just a “normal” person (though, interestingly enough, i spend a good deal of time worrying about how i am not “normal”. hmm. problem for another blog.)
some examples of who i was:
the purple wig i actually wore in public... often... (i was seventeen and in san francisco) - side note: i wish i still had that umbrella
i pierced my lip when i was sixteen and came home, expecting my mother to be furious. she just laughed and said, "oh laura, give it up. you'll never be punk rock." (and damn her, she was right and i did give it up!!)
halloween was ALWAYS done in style (it should be said that that costume was created in a day from things i owned - even the wings. and i don't even have red fishnets anymore...)
and dressing up (for rocky horror, for example) was normal on other days too
and do you want to know what i was most excited about at this festival? laura marling, ginger beer and my first camping trip with my husband. and while these things are fabulous, they aren’t fabulous in a raucous, dramatic or glamorous way. you wouldn’t add an accent and a “darling” to that sort of fabulous. they are prosaically fabulous, and i’m pretty sure that’s an oxymoron.
there was so much of me that whole weekend, but especially that first night, that was just craving a night as a teenager again, i think. and maybe that’s part of it. i did a lot of what people do in their twenties in my teens, and so, i got tired. i could have put on some amazing makeup and worn some great costume, but
sign at the door of the soup library (adorable, yes?)
frankly, it would have been hard to wash my face from the fountain they had at the campsite and i would have got cold in anything i would have wanted to wear.
i mean, there was a big bar right by this lovely little soup and tea shop that was called “the soup library” and do you want to know what? i didn’t even go into the bar.
that’s not to say i didn’t have a few drinks, it’s just they didn’t have ginger beer at the bar. and just as a side note, i’m going to talk about this ginger beer now. it was fantastic. i’ve had real ginger ale since i was a kid, so maybe that’s why i liked it so much. this had the same spicy/sweet flavor that i grew up loving, but it also had alcohol. and they gave you an orange mustache to wear when you ordered one. i’m pretty sure it was supposed to be some game, like you write a name on it and give it to someone else and they have to guess it, or something. i just wore it, obviously.
ginger joe's ginger beer (fantastic)
the next day, i got over myself and just enjoyed my first camping trip with my husband, all the wonderful folk music and the interesting talks (especially the woman who said that the egyptians were aliens – i didn’t stay for her entire talk, so i can’t say that she said that straight out, but that was the gist and it was weird). but when i left, again, i felt a bit melancholic, reminiscing about what could have been. but in the end, even if for a few moments i would have rather been someone else for the weekend, i’d only want to leave as me.
eating pie and mushy peas in my new hat (it is seriously cold in england!)
cool light bubbles (not entirely sure what they were for, but they were pretty neat)
my first ever cricket match - i don't think i'll ever look at the sport the same again
funny little sign by the lake (especially fitting for my little crisis of being) - photo courtesy of the wilderness festival website, by benjamin eagle
laura marling: the one, the only (also stolen from benjamin eagle)
as she is the reason i went to the wilderness festival, i’ll leave you with a video of the song she opened with:
i’ve just closed my myspace account (and my twitter account – but as i only posted four comments, i’m not sure if it matters) and discovered that i once had a blog. who knew? (i’ll tell you who – my mother. the only one who commented on that blog as well as this one so far. bless her.)
anyway, i thought a couple things were interesting and decided to post them here. i’ve added the pictures because i thought they were fun and i apologize for my obsession with ellipsis…
originally posted on: 23rd december, 2006
and so it goes…
well, i have now officially been robbed in barcelona. and just in time for the holiday season, i might add. i woke up this morning, alone, with no roommates to enjoy a lazy saturday morning with, and thought…ah, first day of vacation. i was just getting ready to settle into a day of nothing but coffee drinking and book reading, enjoying the fact that our apartment is the one apartment in barcelona where the heat works wonderfully, when i realized, oh yes, my book was stolen on thursday… along with everything else. that is to say, everything else except, as was helpfully pointed out to my last night, my virginity. sweet jesus.
bar estudiantil - cheapest and nearest bar from our tefl course
i was in a bar in el barrio gótico with some friends, enjoying mojitos and pretending to enjoy patatas bravas, on par with most nights out with the tefl gang, when i reached for something in my purse which had been hanging on the back of my chair, under my jacket and scarf (“ai, mujer” says pilar, the director of pylmon, when i tell her the next morning, (shaking her head at me) “qué pensabas?”). and yes, she is right. it was my own fault for leaving my purse hanging on my chair. naïveté rears its ugly head once again.
however, i have to say thank you to meghan because had she not texted me minutes before (i am assuming), i would have lost my phone along with my camera, my ipod, my wallet and my journal.
it was just gone; i didn’t see a thing, i didn’t hear a thing, and i obviously wasn’t anticipating anything of the kind beforehand. within a half an hour, either when i was in the bathroom or when the man sitting at the table behind me left, my purse and scarf were stolen.
i’m not angry, it breaks my heart… not that i am missing my things, if anything, it has proven once again that i really did get over most of my materialism when i sold everything in portland. but i try to put myself in the reverse position, and i can’t really.
i see a person whom i know nothing about. a person who grew up entirely different than i. a person who either doesn’t define their morals like i do or has made choices up until now that made morals a moot point to a certain degree. i wonder what that life could be like; i either don’t know enough or don’t have enough empathy to get inside that head.
what does one think when they go through someone else’s life? did they look in my camera to see if there were pictures in there before they sold it? did they wonder at all the different monies (old lire from when lisa lived in italy, costa rican colones from an ex-boyfriend, egyptian pounds from when sashi traveled there…) i had in my wallet before they discarded them as useless? did they look through my journal and see all my memories in the back pocket? old marcus aurelius quotes printed by jennifer that we had wheat pasted to a wall in downtown portland, a picture that justin drew “special for auntie laura”, my carmen opera ticket…did they wonder at all the lists of scores from countless rummy games played in figueres and cadaques? did they even glance at my outline for the first chapter of my book? or laugh and get embarrassed for me as they read through countless ridiculous stories about this boy or that silly thing i did…
it’s amazing how habitual we become and how attached to the little things. i am upset about having to get another metro map because i have had that one since i first arrived. i miss my silver card case that has been holding my id and debit card since before i moved to san francisco. i don’t know how i will replace all the little chinese fotunes that came to me in cookies in various states and countries that i keep as little silly reminders of things i find grand in life. will the person who inherits my ipod be inspired by the inscribed “radha govinda jai” on the back when they are riding the metro at 7 in the morning like i was?
and the police asked me what the estimated value of all my things was…and i couldn’t find the words, in spanish, english or the language beyond…
most nights ended at the beach for a botellón
originally posted on: 5th december, 2006
travels of an ex-pat…
i was tired and hungover as it was and semi-not looking forward to making the short but long trip to london on friday, especially as i was flying into luton, which is, depending on traffic, an hour or an hour and a half away from downtown. when i disembarked, i was dismayed to encounter the 45min queue (as it were) for immigration. but, swallowing my impatience, i awaited my turn to speak to the powers that be. when i approached the desk, i handed over my passport, making small talk, as i do, with the officer, secretly hoping it would distract him from the fact that yes, i have been living illegally in spain for the past six months. however, such was not the case. upon seeing my six-month-old stamp, he immediately began asking me a plethora of questions that i had no hope of answering in any way that would please him, regardless of whether i lied or not. needless to say, he knew i was lying. and continued to ask me questions until i had tied myself into an uncomfortable position with no way of escaping. and so it was. his slightly veiled threats of deportation only furthered my confusion and inability to make any sort of coherent and logical story about why i had been in spain for six months without any proper visa.
he asked me what my country would do if he arrived there without any paperwork explaining his intentions and his recent activities. to which i replied, without a hint of sarcasm, “sir, i have no idea what my country would do as i am not an immigration officer.” actually, i said customs, which i think in the end helped my case, as my sole defense was that i had never done this before and had no idea that i was supposed to bring my supposed return ticket to the states and proof of my supposed travels around europe and the surrounding area with me.
as it so happens, i was not deported. however, i was hassled in immigration for god knows how long and finally, as i began to cry in desperation and frustration, he relented; implying that he was doing me a huge favor, he outlined the basics of what it meant to be allowed into the country on a code-3 visa: i am not to be allocated any public health funds, regardless of what should occur to me, under no circumstances can i consider working in england, and last, but not least, my “leave to enter” has been restricted for six months. saying this, he angrily stamped my passport and about five other papers (with this code imprinted above the normal stamp), including the landing card upon which he had written everything i had said, including where i was staying in london, who i was staying with, how much money i had with me, where i had last worked in the states and a million other small details that i don’t even remember.
about two hours later, i arrived at victoria station, in the rain. sashi and sam were, of course, no longer there waiting for me and i was left to my own devices to find our hotel. which turned out not to be very difficult. especially considering everyone spoke english. had this situation occurred the weekend before in roma, i would have been in a far worse situation.
oddly enough, i hadn’t realized until this situation how much i was actually looking forward to my trip to london. i had forgotten how london had always been one of those cities that attracted me from some previous incarnation and that there was truly some spark of connection there for me. at this moment, walking through the rain towards a hotel i only assumed by trust was in front of me, i fully realized that i was devastated that i couldn’t return.
however, when i returned to barcelona, they did not even glance twice at my code-3 stamp and now, despite the luton immigration officer, i am now legal for another three months…
to be continued…
one of my favorite sites in st. james park
originally posted on 10th october, 2006:
amor…
so, i was walking to work the other day and on the ground, written in spray paint, was a few hearts surrounding a message: “no puedo vivir sin ti” with an arrow pointing to the door. everyday, i walked past this public lovenote and thought various capital – r romantic thoughts. i even thought about taking a picture (that’s how cute it was).
then, one day, for no particular reason (and i don’t know why i didn’t do it before – too focused on avoiding the mountains of pigeon shit that litter that particular sidewalk i suppose), i looked up to see what sort of apartment the type of person that someone can’t live without lives in. and i see nothing else but the telepizza (which is the largest, if not the only, pizza delivery chain in barcelona).
i couldn’t help but laugh at myself, at my silly little culture that makes me think as a capital – r romantic and at the fact that for the next 3 hours while i was teaching a bunch of bratty 8 – 10 year olds, all i could think about was pizza.
are they marketing geniuses or is there someone out there that honestly can’t live without telepizza?
originally posted on 22nd september, 2006:
the last piso i looked at today…
i should have known to leave when a lady popped out of her ground floor apartment in an old, slightly soiled pink mu-mu to ask me what floor i was going to. and i thought, as i told her which floor and which piso, what does this do? does this protect the inhabitants from anything? whether i am going there invited or not, i am still going to
the floor of our living room (2nd flat)
the same piso. me knowing that there is in fact a second piso on the sixth floor doesn’t prove that i belong. but, my answer satisfied her and she retreated with what seemed like twelve little yippie dogs trailing behind.
the elevator smelled of that odd, extremely pungent just-before-smelling-like-old-person smell (at least you can identify the old person smell) and the inside door swung harshly back and forth as the elevator headed to the sixth floor. the woman and man were 45 years old (and made many jokes about being old enough to be my parents). they were nice enough, really, and i felt kind of bad for wanting to get the hell out the whole time. and then i started thinking, as i often do here, how odd it is that north americans have this ingrained sense of politness all the time. there was no reason for me to remain listening to their repeated stories about this person and that person and the other apartment they owned, which coincidentally is down the street from mine now, and how their business is going, and how they visited north carolina before. i somehow justified staying because i felt like it would help my spanish. they were both from argentina and i haven’t heard an accent as strong as theirs in some time.
finally, i got over it, and told them as nicely as i could (using ustedes the entire time) that i really had to leave.
i have seen what feels like a million apartments and most of them are ready to rent to me at that moment, which i find somewhat unsettling. they don’t even really ask me many questions, they are really just renting a room out. and somewhere inside of me, my ego is calling out saying, wait, don’t you want to know why i am here? don’t you want me to tell you in my practiced spanish sentences how long i have been here and what i am doing? you don’t want to hear my funny story about teaching the present perfect today in my pre-intermediate class?
i find it difficult to make a decision like that on the spot, and thus am left on the 21st with few prospects for the 1st, yet somehow, my faith in my intuition remains intact…
i always leave, oddly enough, in such a good mood…singing to myself as i walk down
very strange lamp i never understood in our living room (first flat)
the street towards the next absolute failure of a place. somehow, it is restorative and it reminds me of my first day in spanish class when my teacher asked me to talk about the strangest person i’ve ever encountered and i was at a loss for words, in english or in spanish…
i’m in the need of comfort today. while not technically raining (yet), it’s dark and grey and i know it will be soon – my smart phone tells me so. i tried to prove it wrong yesterday, wearing my little white flats that can barely handle walking on cobblestones, let alone any type of inclement weather, and wearing only a thin cardigan. of course, while walking to lunch with my newly-made friend (and president of the american women’s club – because that’s how i roll), i got drenched. and not just pleasantly dashing into a café, shaking out my wet hair and laughing wet, i mean mud up to my calves, mascara smudged under my eyes, shivering and dripping wet.
at least i was wearing jeans. janet was wearing a skirt. sitting down, she commented that she hadn’t thought it was going to rain that day, and i responded with: neither did i! well, actually, my phone told me that it would around noonish (it was noon), but i really didn’t want to believe it. luckily, she started laughing, instead of rolling her eyes as she should have done.
the lunch itself was fantastic – filled with sentences fraught with meaning and not delved into completely, tangents that never meandered their way back to the original point, and, of course, five or six completely unnecessary glasses of wine. it began with the waiter accidentally throwing all the bread and silverware at us, and ended hours later with me completely forgetting my little yellow sweater and walking out into the sun (odd how fast the weather can change here), unsure of where i was or where i was going.
i discovered that she had a daughter almost my brother’s age and that they were very similar (in that she and her husband are completely supporting her and she can’t seem to get her life going) and that she saw the new harry potter movie by herself on a tuesday afternoon. she’s from upstate new york and during a club event, was the only member to fill in all of the us states correctly (which james could probably do, and i could not).
considering i had german lessons at 6 and had a list of things to do beforehand, including coming home to get my books and doing my homework and printing the photos for our thank you cards, a long lunch like that was probably not what i should have been doing, but it was just what i needed. i got myself a soy mocha frappuccino and a berliner (and one for james – which, of course, got squished in my bag and left a sticky, jam-filled imprint through the bag and onto the inside of my purse) and happily meandered my way to class, only getting slightly lost on the way. of course, by the time i got there, i no longer had my pleasant buzz, and half way through the class, i was slightly hungover and miserable.
which, considering i’m not hungover at all today, was ok. the only downside was that after class, we went to the subway around the corner, which i was desperately craving, only to find that their machine was down (it was raining again – of course) and therefore, i couldn’t pay with a credit card. which meant that we missed the first train and had to wait half an hour AND i didn’t get to eat a subway sandwich OR doritos.
but james, lovely husband that he is, had got me a snickers and forgotten about it, and it was almost as good.
of course, now, i’m having a day-after-a-good-day type of day. one where all the chores that i meant to do yesterday are still on my to do list, along with others that were meant for today, and i absolutely can’t stand the thought of doing any of them.
i had spent months trying to find what my mom calls “irish” or “steel-cut” oats and the whole time i’d been avoiding buying any old regular, boring oats. finally, i gave in and am now enjoying hot oatmeal with way too much maple syrup. i don’t know what took me so long. i suppose i expected it to stop raining at some point and be summery. i’ve finally accepted that that just isn’t going to happen.
though the oatmeal is wonderful, i still sort of wish i had a subway sandwich. even better, i wish they delivered.
in august, james and i are going to the wilderness festival in oxford. 3 days of art and literature debates and presentations, music, theater and banquets. there’s even a masked ball friday night. i’m very excited and looking forward to seeing how james handles it all. we are bringing a tent and camping for the weekend.
this has all come of me wanting to see laura marling, who is playing there on sunday, i believe, and turned into an even bigger affair. i haven’t done anything like this in so long, and i’m so happy to be doing it now!
last tuesday i went to a book club meeting (very proud of myself, even spoke up in the group, despite the old panic attack reflex) and was debating between spending the day in köln before our evening class, or returning home and then going to class with james later. i decided to come back home as i had nothing to do, really, and it was threatening to rain and i was wearing my hippie-pants and flip-flops and didn’t have my very cute umbrella with me. so, i walked back to hbf and caught the train.
i was reading a book (one of those damn amelia peabody egyptian mysteries i’m embarrassed to say i read yet can’t ever put down) and suddenly looked up to find that i had been sitting in mülheim for some time now. of course, there are times when the train sits at a station or at some random point on the tracks for a few minutes longer than normal, but i realized that it had been even longer. there was a girl sitting behind me with her headphones in, who i believe realized the same thing at the same time. she leaned towards me and said, “entschuldigung…”, which is of course the only thing i understood. i made my apologetic face and said, “sorry, ich spreche kein deutsch”. she nodded and i went back to my book.
after a bit, i looked up, astonished that we still hadn’t moved and it dawned on me that someone had been speaking over the loudspeaker repeatedly for the past few minutes and i looked around to see that there was no one on the train anymore. sheepishly, i put my book away and got off. a man was walking quickly up and down the platform, checking each carriage to make sure there was no one inside. i asked him if he spoke english, to which he replied, of course, “a little”. he informed me (in very good english) that the train was turning around and going back to köln. so, i got off and sat down and waited.
after a bit, i checked the train times on my phone, only to discover that all the trains going my direction had been canceled. it was at this point that i remembered that i was starving. i had eaten a “muffin light” at starbucks at 9 o’clock that morning and it was coming up on 2 o’clock and i was getting concerned. i contemplated crossing the tracks, running down the hill and jumping the fence to get to the kaufland opposite the station, but i was sure that the instant i did that, a train would come. i checked the train times going back towards köln, only to discover that they were all canceled as well. i messaged james. his answer: take the bus.
the bus? i thought, i don’t even know where a bus would be around here, let alone which bus goes home or to the city center. sigh. completely unhelpful. of course, this whole time they are making announcements over the loudspeaker, telling me important information that i needed to know, but didn’t understand. and i’m getting hungrier and hungrier. and then i remembered that if i walked to the end of the platform and down the stairs and around, i’d come upon the u (metro). ha. new to this city indeed. i did just that, arriving very shortly in appelhofplatz and sitting down to lunch at a lovely thai café and resuming my book. i also discovered a gorgeous kitchen/household shop that had many hand-made, bespoke items. of course, i have no clue what it was called, but i think just maybe, i might even be able to find it again.
it started really raining on my walk to class, and i felt a little silly in flip-flops, but hey. what can you do. james said on his way to class, he saw a bunch of police at the mülheim station. still no clue what went on that afternoon.
i’ve been wondering about eating meat occasionally. mostly, i suppose, because of james, which would really anger some people – why, i don’t quite understand. after all, it’s only natural that the people in your life closest to you would affect you. i could also say that i don’t smoke because of james, and no one would really judge that. but being a vegetarian has really become something other than just one’s diet. like so many things, it’s become wrapped up in a persons identity, so much so that for some people, it becomes political and therefore, confrontational.
i think that the biggest reason i haven’t made a decision about whether or not to eat meat is that i can’t seem to look at it as a purely dietary question. it is absolutely a label that i identify with and feel that in some way, it defines me – if nothing else, it’s a box i check on certain applications. and after all, isn’t that how we are characterized?
of course, i’ve been eating fish for some time now and i seem to conveniently ignore that fact when i’m ticking these boxes, or describing myself to others. though it is something that i eat (mostly only in sushi form), i haven’t yet banished the ‘vegetarian’ from my way of thinking of myself. it helps that some people don’t see the distinction between being a vegetarian and a pescatarian, but i most certainly do.
i suppose the real focal point here for me is not necessarily about what i’m having for dinner or when i’ll finally give in and try chicken wings, but what composes someone’s ‘identity’. did i acquire my specific labels from years of introducing myself at new schools? and did i give them to myself, or where they decided for me? and how long do you have to feel like something in order to add it to your list of words/ideas that define you?
if i think of who i am, of the labels i’ve adopted throughout my life, some have been with me forever, some have been added later and some have even been left behind, as some new version of myself emerged. i am or have been: a leo, a californian, an srfer, a tenenberg, a rabbit person (worst pets ever), a virgin, a blonde, a poet, a druggie, a good driver, a depressive, a girlfriend, a flirt, a capital-r-romantic, a student, a teacher, a social smoker, a best friend, a city person, a professional walker, a lost soul, an american, a roommate (and even a flatmate), a book lover, an artist, a crier, a spanish speaker, a drama queen, a sister (and a godsister), a plant killer, a wife, an ex-pat, an illegal immigrant (and now, thankfully, a legal one), a hippie, a daddy’s girl and, of course, a vegetarian.
influential people in my life (dr solomon and dr harrison) have repeatedly said to me that affirming these labels is what continues the cycle, that it’s as much my saying i’m a depressive as the lack of serotonin in my brain that makes me depressed. to be honest, i haven’t really figured out how to deal with that. while i do agree, attempting to say, i take my sam-e for my happiness and even focusing on it while i swallow the pills, hasn’t made me less depressed. or has it? i wouldn’t have any way of comparing.
eating meat, on the other hand, would absolutely make me not a vegetarian. but what would i lose? far from being political for me, i think being a vegetarian is more religious and cultural than i’ve let on, even to myself. it’s wrapped up in my childhood, in srf, in the chai tea and badly wrapped saris of india night and the mushroom burgers that master used to make when they had a café on the grounds (and someone replicated on special occasions). it’s completely ingrained in the fabric of who i am, from the confused looks and puzzled questions in the third grade (you’re a what? what’s a vegetarian?) to the first meeting of the gender studies group at lewis & clark, where i ate a piece of cheese pizza and was glared at self-righteously by someone thinking they understood my label better than i did.
the most important thing here is the sentence that i was just about to write: take it all away, and what is left?
is there something essential underneath all of the societal definitions that is more, way more (less?). and therefore, why do we need an identity? is it to remember who we are? to wake up in this skin and think, oh yes, i am laura, a girl, born in july, quite sensitive, married to a man (james, british, a pisces, hard-working, a sweet boy…) and a vegetarian.
some days, i wish i woke up and didn’t remember. despite the fact that in actuality, that would be quite scary, i’d like to see what i’d do with a day that had no shoulds and no habits already occupying it.
i can’t seem to stop baking! and yet i wonder why my “diet” isn’t really working the way i want it to be. hmm. my excuse is that i’ve just got a new food processor (which i love) and, of course, a lot of time on my hands.
today i walked along the rhine by myself for the first time. every time i come into the city, i spend most of my time exploring the city center or breite strasse near what james calls “apple sauce” (appellhofplatz), my new favorite area; i’d almost forgotten about the river. it was quite grey and very calm. and though it can’t possibly compare to the ocean (no salty aroma for one thing), it was nice to hear that lovely shushing sound of the water lapping against the ships and the dock.
it was my first day of therapy with tanya, and with her directions, i found the rhine from her office and walked back to the hofbahnhof to catch the train (stopping for coffee and a croissant, of course).
i’m not sure how it went – filling out her initial assessment form, i realized that it has been quite a long time since i last had therapy. in fact, since just after university. i guess, like everything else, i’ve been committed to it off and on. which is probably a very large part of my problem.
i got there early (thanks to the years of influence my husband has had on me, i’m sure) and rang the buzzer. no answer. so, of course, i have a dilemma: do i ring again? and if so, will i be bothering her while she’s with another client? or will i seem obnoxiously impatient? when is the appropriate time to ring again? then i actually thought, what if she’s watching me now and this is all some sort of psychological test (crazy). so i immediately rang the buzzer again, just to prove that i was not too obsessed with what other’s thought to ring a bell. of course, right then, she rode up on her bicycle. had it been a psychological test, i obviously failed.
the flat was very quaint, from the exposed floorboards to the yellow polka-dotted glasses placed on the table should her clients want water (mit Gas, klar…). she also told me that she usually followed standard german custom, which was to remove one’s shoes inside, which i had not known, and that i was welcome to as well. she had a bin of comfortable slippers besides the chair in the entryway. i sat in her kitchen-cum-waiting room for a few minutes, while she “pottered” around (i always wonder how the british ‘potter’ became ‘putter’ for us.) and then went into her office.
the room was quite sparse, but comfortable. the chairs themselves feel a bit too thrift storey, leaving much to be desired in terms of visual appeal, but they were comfortable enough. she did that thing where she nodded her head and shaped her mouth as if she really understood me and could empathize with whatever i was feeling (said just so, markedly) that i find particularly annoying, though i’m sure i would do it as well. besides that, i found her pleasant enough (i do love the irish brogue).
therapists always latch on to leslie and that surprises me. though, i do think there are remnants of her voice in my head (i still have a problem wearing black, and though i blame all those years at aveda, i know it’s her telling me i didn’t look good in it), i’m just always taken aback that they seem to key right in, without my having said anything accusatory. as if the connotations of the word godmother aren’t at all related to the fairy sort.
i also mentioned so you think you can dance, which is just sort of embarrassing. but i can’t help how much i love it. i find the confidence of dancers just gorgeous – the way they carry themselves as if they are so comfortable within their own bodies. i would love to know that feeling. and of course, my relationship with dance and with my body is also directly related to leslie. there’s something in me that would love to start over and take dance lessons now – though i’m not sure if my mom would buy me another tutu.
all in all, i would say, outlook: hopeful.
i’ve been waiting for jennifer to get online this whole time, thinking she’s forgot me, when in actuality, i got the time wrong. how long have i been living in this time zone? and i forgot that it was nine hours difference? must be all that sugar in the cookies going to my head…
and on that note, just a lil’ something from my favorite show. 🙂
independence day is one of the holidays that i never fully appreciated until i lived outside the country and missed it for five consecutive years now. i don’t even know what i miss exactly; i can’t imagine what i would be doing now were i there. i just have these vague images in my mind of walking through carlsbad with a beer in hand and hearing music pouring out of every home we passed on our way to the beach and another time in del mar, sitting atop a hill watching the fireworks over the fairgrounds. mostly, i remember the feel of sand beneath my feet, the smell of salt, fish and seaweed combined with the smoky, meaty smell of barbecue twinged with the sharper, pervading hint of already-exploded fireworks and the sounds of summer all around.
of course, i’m probably romanticizing it, as per usual. most likely, i was working most days, or going to school. and i’m pretty sure i only hung out in carlsbad one year.
perhaps the embellished memories come partly from barcelona. after all, the fourth of july can’t help but pale in comparison with san juan. and if ever there were a celebration that didn’t need exaggeration to begin with, it’s san juan. it’s so powerful in fact, you can feel it coming every year. first with the children, as the heightened energy in the classroom becomes almost palpable and then walking home there’s the first of many groups of boys, randomly (carelessly and recklessly) throwing fireworks at anything and everything they see in the streets (and one year, at me, from above – looking up, i expected to see the tops of hiding teenage heads when what do i see but a four year old boy grinning ecstatically and his yia yia looking down as innocent as can be.) then it grows as the fireworks stands start popping up all over the city and the days get longer and the august holidays approach, but still seem too, too far away. looking back, the city practically glistened in anticipation: the beaches were full, guiris were walking around looking like gambas (sadly, myself included) and out in the plazas, the sun shining those few extra hours meant that parents could have another vino blanco while their children kicked fútbols at the walls, at the clock tower, at each other and ran around delightedly, knowing what was coming, but not knowing how to contain themselves until then.
though i was always happy that san juan was coming – intertwined with the fact that it meant the end of the school year and summer were also imminent, it also, frankly, scared me half to death. every year i expected someone around me, if not myself, to have their leg/hand/hair exploded/set on fire while some seven year old watched in fascination. of course, all of my adult students and friends always told me that i was crazy – ‘nothing ever happens, it’s perfectly safe’. yeah right. though i never saw any accidental or on-purpose firework-related injuries, i still have no doubt that they occur.
my first san juan will always be the most special. i had arrived in barcelona about two weeks before and the experience was still new and exciting and open to anything and everything. though we were all working hard at our tefl course, we were also playing hard and none harder than our little les corts flat, thanks in no small part to our lovely irish contingent, claire. of course, looking back, we can easily blame her for a large part of it, but in fact, her influence was more than welcomed.
i, of course, was trying desperately to change my initial impression of the city, which was, sadly, negative. it’s just that, having finally arrived after such a long and arduous flight (naively and blissfully unaware of the fear that would clench my whole body each and every subsequent time i re-entered the country illegally) i was ready for something big to hit me. i knew that tingle that i felt (and still feel) when i first saw san francisco at seventeen and every inch of me just knew that i would live there one day. i thought, ‘this is barcelona. (europe!) it’ll be even better…’ it was not. the taxi ride from the airport into the city center is everything i expected barcelona not to be: boring, mundane, industrial and frankly, ugly. i was disappointed and the longer i was there, i was nervous. nervous that i would hate it and that the ‘oh my god, what have i done’ feeling would never leave. (of course, most of it did and some of it didn’t and i probably should have moved to madrid after christin left, but that’s a whole nother story. on top of that, i should mention that the drive from sfo to the city isn’t all that great either.)
so, i was showing myself that i’d made the right decision by throwing myself whole-heartedly into everything: walking all over the city, drinking, partying, studying, learning english grammar, learning spanish and again, partying. and then, just two little weeks barcelona presented me with a perfect opportunity to do just that: san juan, the shortest night of the year and the official start to summer. i really have no idea why it isn’t celebrated everywhere.
san juan happily coincided with both claire and devin’s birthdays, so we threw a pre-celebration party at ours and then took ourselves off to the beach to join in the revelry. the entire night was complete with everything that one should experience when one moves to spain in their twenties: drinking cava out of the bottle, dancing with thousands of people to loud techno blasting from the chiringuitos and skinny-dipping surrounded by fireworks in the sky and bonfires on the beach. all around us were people from different countries, different cultures and i could hear every language i could recognize and many that i couldn’t. the best part of it all was how innocent it all seemed. we were in the middle of a bacchanalia and everyone was smiling like children – even the skinny dipping had no sexual overtones or innuendo, it was simply that we wanted to go into the water. the night ended with the sun coming up on us sitting in a kumbaya circle, smoking joints with a group of lovely gay catalans.
of course, now i see that the san juan celebrations are not as innocent as i felt that night, which was confirmed the next year when tiana got her bag stolen, and that feeling of the first one was never quite captured again. but in that moment, it was everything i had moved away to experience and contained the promise of everything barcelona could be for me in the next year. and, of course, it absolutely blew any memory i have or could possibly imagine of the fourth of july out of the water.
i’ve now been to german class and discovered that i still don’t like not being good at something. i think part of it is because james is there and he took a semester of german at school or something and knows just enough to know more than i and to be, therefore, very annoying.
our teacher is dreadful. i know it’s horrible to say after only one class and i’m hoping he’ll improve. especially since i understand how annoying it is to teach that first class – especially when it’s a book class and no one has their books. but seriously. half the time, he kind of sat there, staring at the book in front of him, obviously thinking, “how do i get them to learn this information when they don’t have it in front of them?” only in german, i assume. he even had us do the listenings without the book or a photocopy. which can only be described as confusing. very confusing. (“who is frau baume?” “max who?” “what’s going on?”)
favorite part: after finishing a portion, the teacher pointed to the blackboard and asked, “ist klar? can i vanquish it?”, meaning can he erase it. abso-freakin-lutely. vanquish the hell out of it. ist klar.
james and i are the only native english speakers, yet most of the class was conducted in english, which is still just amazing. there were about fifteen other students (i admit, i’m sort of making that number up…) who were all from poland, croatia, possibly greenland, either lithuania or latvia (i didn’t understand their accents and i imagine they weren’t saying it in english), hungary, argentina and spain, and they all spoke english (except for the pobrecita argentinian).
the more countries i go to and live in, the more i feel blessed to have had en
glish as my first language. to be able to move first to spain and then to germany without knowing both languages first is just incredible. i don’t believe it would have been as easy had my native tongue not been english. esperanto, eat your heart out.
our book, which we don't have yet
and speaking of my non-native-but-much-loved other language, there were three spanish students (well, two spanish and one argentinian). i feel like since there are three of them, though, they won’t really want to be my friend. i hope that one of them would be interested in
some sort of intercambio. i can feel the spanish oozing out of my brain by the day and i really want to keep up with it.
the second class is tonight and we don’t have our books. what horrible students! i’m going to try and get them in cologne before class, but the leverkusen bookshop was out of them.
not an excellent start, but on the whole, i’m very much looking forward to being trilingual.