Thursday, October 9, 2008

German Things That Bother Me

I have to apologize about not having any pictures lately, but after losing my camera in Munchen I have not had the opportunity to replace it. Whic brings me to my first issue.

1. Everything here costs way more than it does in the US. Yes it is hard to believe but my $130 camera is priced around 200 EUR. And the exchange rate is getting better, but is still not good when your hubby gets paid in USD.
2. Cooking. The oven is in celsius, the measurements are in mL and liters, and weight is in grams. I hope to blog more about the oven tomorrow as someone from school is going to tell me what the symbols on the dial mean. Yes, I still have no idea if I am cooking things correctly as there is no bake or broil option. Again, more tomorrow.
3. Irresponsible dog owners. There is always someone walking their dog without a leash and they let their dogs greet other dogs without permission. This really bothers me b/c if Tut bites one of the dogs for getting in his face I get sued. PS, Tut is not great with others when he is on his lead. And I might be the only person in the country who cleans up after my pet.
4. No drive-thru ATMs or Geldautomats as they are called here. If I have to hear one more time how TJ has to find a place to park near a bank to get cash I will freak out.
5. Salon fear. I have many strands of white hair, my roots are growing in, and my hair is growing at an uneven rate. I won't even go there on the eye brows. My solution is to wear my hair in a pony, and tell all I am growing my brows in from a bad experience. I am very afraid to go to a salon and have a language problem...the result could be one brow and pink hair! Maybe I can ask if we get get to salon talk in class sooner than later.

Those are the biggies for me, TJ has just one...the shopping cart. All the wheels are independent and they are impossible to navigate.

Again, I am exhausted from class. We covered at least twice as much as yesterday, and the major topic was the ever draining verb conjugation. Which brings me to our next lesson...

I = Ich
You (formal) = Sie
You (informal) = Du
He = er
She = sie
It = es
We = Wir
They = Sie
You (plural and informal) = Ihr
You (plural and formal) = Sie

So we can take the verb to understand, verstehen and conjugate it...

Ich: verstehe
Sie: verstehen
Du: verstehest
er/sie/es: verstehet
Wir: verstehen
Ihr: verstehet
Sie: verstehen

Yep, some of them are exactly the same. This can make it easy and hard all at the same time as there are always exceptions. My favorite word learned today was ubrigens (with an umlaut over the u) which means "by the way". A lot of people couldn't understand what the phrase meant until I used an example and said, "Tomorrow is supposed to warm up and be nice...and by the way Britney's new video premieres tomorrow as well". The Russian girls totally got it as did other people who knew anything about US music and/or crazy celebs. It is sad that my first moment of sunshine can be credited to Brit, and I have Carrie to thank for sending that article out or I would have never known. Thanks, Carrie!

Auf Wiedersehen

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'll bet a year or two from now you'll look back at the beginning days and laugh. You'll know so much more about the culture. BTW, that would be scary about the hair situation. Maybe if you see someone with really good hair, you could attempt to ask who does it. I know, easier said by me in English than by you in German.

Unknown said...

Britney goes over well in any language!

Kim said...

Your blog cracks me up!! I'm always laughing out loud!