¿Por qué, Dios?

As I sit here, eating chicken soup for the fourth time this week, I wonder why God would see fit to grant me with two separate illnesses in two weeks. I literally had one for a week, and the moment I got better I developed the other one. I imagine my body saying something like, "You have defeated the common cold, young one, but let's see how you match up against a STOMACH VIRUS! MWAHAHAHA!!"

So yeah, last week I was hacking up a lung, and this week my stomach is killing me. That's my excuse for why I haven't written in forever. But it's probably for the best because I've barely done anything fun in the past two weeks and it would have mostly consisted of things like, "Today I blew my nose twenty seven times." And you don't want to hear that.

The fun/cool things I have done in the past two weeks are:

(1) Saw Bertolt Brecht's Threepenny Opera at the Berliner Ensemble, which is the ensemble Brecht founded back in his day. It was AMAZING, seriously one of the best pieces of theatre I've ever seen in my life. I'm not going to expound upon it here, but it was truly an experience.

(2) Participated in an anarchist political rally / techno dance parade. I didn't actually know what it was about - I think they were calling for the dissolution of the German state or something like that - but my friend from Berlin said we should come and check it out so we did. There were a TON of people, dressed in black, just marching through the streets of Berlin, shouting slogans and such. But the part we were there for were the trucks that had DJs on them, playing techno and rap and punk music and what have you, and it was basically just a big dance party. All in all, a good time, and pretty funny to be rolling through a yuppie neighborhood at night while blaring dance music.

(3) Went to the flea market again, got a nice wool scarf and a sweet blue plaid umbrella for super cheap. Sha-bam.

And that's about it. Classes have started, blah blah blah, going to check out a couple at the University next week, so we'll see how everything turns out.

I did have a funny realization, while looking up at the Berlin Fernsehturm, that I'm living in Europe! That's crazy! I know that's not really news, but it's the first time that really hit me. I guess it's because Germany is just a bunch of white people that dress a lot like Americans (though they do dress a lot better than Americans, as a whole), and a big city that could maybe be Chicago or Minneapolis or whatever, so it doesn't have that "exotic" feel that maybe Venice or Granada would. But whateva, I loves it. And I'm living in Europe for a whole year. Madness.

But I know you didn't tune in this week to hear about me, liebe Leute, and I'm fine with that. So at this point in the blog I'll just give you what you want- the next installment of THINGS GERMAN PEOPLE HATE:

#11: Variety in their Slang Words
Curse words not included, these people seriously have two slang words that they use for EVERYTHING: krass and geil. And I don't pretend to have mastered their usages, but they're weird, let me tell you. Krass can mean awesome, cool, etc, but then it can also mean bad, unfortunate, shitty. What? And then geil is even stranger: it means cool, sexy, and horny, and not at the same time. So all I have to say is, WTF.

#12: Any Possibility of Confusion at Check-Out
Germans are absolute fiends for that little plastic thing that you find at the check-out counter at the grocery store. You know, the one that separates your groceries on the belt from the groceries of the person in front of you. Well, don't even try to get away with not using it in Germany. Even if there's like, a foot of space in between their head of lettuce and your box of noodles, they will make absolute certain that there is no confusion by placing the little plastic thing for you. Because they don't want some noodles on their bill.

That's it for now. Much love and alles Gute!