Monthly Archives: November 2010

Changing of the seasons

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The first snow of Winter 2010/11

The first snow of Winter 2010/11

Another covering of snow blanketed our backyard this morning.  Probably not even half a centimeter thick since it did not last very long.  It was gone before I returned home from class.  I have heard in other parts of Europe there has been a lot of snow already, but here we have not seen that.  On the other hand it has been very cold with temperatures topping out around the freezing mark.  The picture to the right is from last week when the first snow stuck to the ground.  You can see it did not amount to much.  I wonder if we are going to have as much snow as last year.  Germany was covered with a lot of snow for most of winter.

Being from the mid western United States means I will be going through a change in weather patterns this Winter.  When you look at a map Southern Germany lines up with northern Maine.  For starters that means there is a lot less daylight than what I am used to.  Plus, so far it seems Germany has gotten colder a lot sooner.  Before Thanksgiving some of my friends in the United States were writing about the surprisingly warm November temperatures.  Yet, days later it was snowing.  At least here I can say the cold is consistent.  Hopefully I will adjust quickly.  Otherwise it will be a cold couple months going to class on my bicycle.

Harry Potter in German

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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 1

Last weekend, Anni and I spontaneously decided to watch the new Harry Potter movie while out for a walk.  With my limited German vocabulary, I have always felt bad about spending money watching a movie I will probably not understand.  So, this was the our first theater experience together in Germany.  It went much better than I could have hoped for.

Since my knowledge of the story is limited to the previous movies I thought it would be difficult to follow the movie in German.  And, it was challenging sometimes, yet there were enough action sequences to fill in where my ears left off.  Plus, Anni wonderfully translated highlights from the longer dialogged scenes.  I really enjoyed the experience and am looking forward to the conclusion next year.  Which, makes this the first Harry Potter movie I regret not reading the book beforehand.  I think this is because the main characters are older, making it seems more relevant and less like a children’s story.

Even with Anni translating, combined with the portions I understood and the action sequences, I still found myself wishing for subtitles.  In the past, I have always walked away from subtitled movies in the theater with mixed feelings.  Passion of the Christ is probably the most notable.  I found the subtitles very distracting and I wished they had just filed English dialog instead of Latin.  Apocalypto was a different story because I was mostly interested in the historical framework of the film.  Same goes for the movie Mongol.  Maybe someday someone will create glasses where the subtitles are displayed for the individual wearer.  Something like those described in Daniel Suarez’s books Daemon and Freedom™.  Or better yet, automatic translation into any language.

Side Note:  If you have not read Daemon or Freedom™ you should.  A very exciting modern day thriller with lots of fun and interesting technology mixed in.  I highly recommend them.  You can also listen to the book from Audible.com.  That is what I did.  The authors website for the books is at thedaemon.com

Der Weihnachtsmarkt ist kommen.

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The Christmas market is coming.  I have never been a Christmas person.  So much commercialization comes with Christmas in the United States and I feel like that diminishes the entire holiday.  The Fourth of July has always been my favorite holiday.  Mostly because I get to blow up lots and lots of fireworks.  Thanksgiving comes in a close second with all the great food.  Yet, being in Germany makes Christmas exciting for me.  The market is another thing that truly is not duplicated in the United States.  With booths full of hand crafted items, food, and drinks.  Rides for kids and probably a band or two and an atmosphere which is all German.  Over the last week the booths have been appearing downtown and decorations have been going up.  I am looking forward to seeing the market once it is open.

Crime, it is annoying…

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The outside of our apartment building is under construction again.  They glued foam blocks to the house and are now in the process of covering that with plaster.  After the painters are done with the plaster it will be painted white.  While the work is going on, the house is surrounded with scaffolding and, because of the scaffolding, we have been parking our car on the street.

Muddy footprints on our car

Muddy footprints on our car

Yesterday we left for a walk downtown.  While getting into the car I noticed footprints on the outside of the passenger window.  I couldn’t really tell the muddy marks were footprints at first.  While I looked over the car I noticed a broken beer bottle laying along the curb.  Then I noticed the missing passenger side mirror.  By now I was pretty irritated.  I think someone decided they should break into our car, but after their apparent failure to bust the window they took their aggression upon the mirror.

Fortunately the damage was fairly minor and the insurance should cover everything.  I just find the whole incident very annoying.  Obviously whoever did this was drinking, but I will not allow the consumption of alcohol to be an excuse for anyone.  Whoever did this plainly has no regard for another persons property.  Last week someone, probably the same group of people, broke a wooden fence near our house.  About 10 boards were broken at approximately kicking height.  There were also broken beer bottles near by.

After finding the damage we went directly to the Police station to file a report.  This took about 45 minutes.  Most of the time was taken up while waiting for the Windows XP computer, with a floppy drive, to boot up and get into the reporting program.  Overall I say probably an hour of our Sunday was given over to the actions of some juvenile idiot.  After the repairs to the car are complete probably another couple hours will go down the drain as well.  All because someone decided it would be fun to destroy someone else’s property.

This is my second run in with destructive juvenile behavior since coming to Germany.  This summer another person thought it would be fun to steal the reflectors off of my bike.  I did not even notice they were gone until Anni asked me about it.  Personally, I can not fathom why you would want to do either one of these acts.  It serves no purpose even if you have a self destructive personality.  I wish it was different in a US city.  There will be at least one idiot no matter where you live.