"Leider keine Karte"

Alas, I grew up in a world where it was normal to pay for a purchase of $2.43 with a debit or *gasp* a credit card. I stopped carrying around cash around the time I was twelve or thirteen, and used debit for all my purchases.

Some people will tell you that carrying around loads of cash is dangerous, if for no other reason than that you have no real way of getting your money back if you're robbed at gunpoint. You'd think this happens all the time for how often this is used as justification for paying with a card.

For me, I don't own enough cash to warrant anyone robbing me at gunpoint. Even if I carried all the cash I have in my bank account with me, I'd probably get my face blown off for only being able to offer my robber a cool 2€. "SPINNST DU?!" *bang bang*

No, my reason is much more subtle.

I hate change.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't just hate change for the typical reasons like all that coin weighing down my pockets or the fact Krauts have this awesome habit of taking twelve years to pay for their goods at DM because they need to count their seventeen cents out exactly. (Speaking of which -- why is that okay, yet me paying for something worth 4€ in 50c increments gets me a dirty stare?) Anyhoo, my reason is that I hate pennies. 5c coins are at least halfway useful. But 2c coins? 1c coins? The mere fact that both of them exist? The only time I'm pulling those puppies out is when I'm at the bakery and am buying a bun for 16c, and that's the last of what's leftover in my wallet before the first of the month.

Most annoying, though, is the fact I don't always get this far and often end up dumping the one and two cent pieces into a big jar a couple of times per month, letting them waste their copper selves into oblivion. Sure, that whole euro I've accumulated over the last year and a half isn't really that much of a waste. Nevertheless, every time I dump another six cents into that jar, I feel like crying at the fact that, had I been paying with EC card, I wouldn't have these First World problems.

*** As an interesting aside, I have actually been known to buy more than I need in order to bump my purchase up to an amount that seems reasonable to use a card for. It makes my fretting over that odd euro in my coin jar all the more laughable, really.

MUSLIM AFRICAN RE-ELECTED TO RUIN CHAMPION OF THE FREE WORLD *cough*

Thank you, majority of Americans, for giving me good news when I woke up. My liver thanks you in advance since I no longer have to start a rape-baby-gift-from-God-and-no-longer-in-the-binder-because-I'm-standing-in-the-kitchen drinking campaign.

PS -- I am fully aware of Obama's shortcomings. I don't actually like him as a president in the first place. But, in comparison to Mittens, well...

Back "Home"

As I've mentioned about a million freeking times, the word "home" is awfully fraught with complications and hidden meanings for a word that is a part of one's basic English vocabulary.

This evening, like every time I return from Allgäu, Stuttgart, or anywhere were they speak a dialect I can actually stand (don't judge, you), I exit my tram, walk down my inevitably rainy street, and wish more than anything that I was back south. The more often I complete this ritual, the more clear it becomes to me that I shrug on NRW like a heavy coat laden with issues that I just can't wait to take off again next month.

So, in a meek attempt at protest, I now text family and friends with "I'm 'home'" to let them know I'm safe and sound, at least physically if not emotionally.

PS -- I don't know when or how often I'll be posting in the next little while. Should you know me personally, you know I'm going through more than one crisis right now, the biggest of which is occurring this week. Maybe I'll talk about it one day when I'm ready to speak publicly about it, but probably not. If my grammar and spelling is worse than usual, it probably means I'm blogging drunk. This will particularly be the case if Romney starts ruining America (which, crisis itself, is unrelated to my shiznat).

The Point of No Return

I have two computers. You see, I have this really old notebook and a semi-new netbook. I got my netbook when I was fed up getting the blue screen of death on my older notebook. No matter what I did, my system kept crashing and I feared for the term papers I was writing.

I'm hardly a computer genius. Aside from wiping everything and re-installing Windows fresh, I neither knew what else to try, nor was interested in spending the money to blow a fresh breath of life into a laptop that was over three years old.

Enter my netbook.

I originally bought it because of its battery life. (Nine hours, HELLO!) That being said, I couldn't get over how slow it was. As in I would prefer dial-up slow. Still, making myself a coffee while Facebook would load was nothing compared to the fact Word would freeze anytime a document I was working on hit the twelve-page mark. (Errrm: how am I supposed to write a Master's thesis or *cough* a doctoral dissertation, then?)

It must be said that, in the meantime, I was still using my old laptop as a DVD player since I don't have a TV. Not being connected to the internet seemed to resolve the crashing problem, so I just went on my merry way with that.

I'm not really sure why I decided to try out Linux. I suppose it was a mixture of boredom and hearing coworkers and people I know rave on and on about how amazingly wonderful the whole thing is. So, I went an installed Wubi to see what all the hype was about.

It could just be a point-of-view thing, but somehow, if something is not working on Ubuntu, I see it as some sort of let me figure you out challenge, and I don't run around yelling "F-U Windows, F-U!!"

Yeah, it's probably just the attitude I go into it with.

Still, the best thing about Ubuntu is that, all the things that drove me crazy about my notebook that I couldn't figure out (mostly to do with user settings) were suddenly fixable in Ubuntu. (And Ubuntu is awesome for computer dunces like me who likely couldn't do anything more than a few basic things with the Terminal if their lives depended on it.)

I haven't been playing around with it for that long (maybe a month or so), but I finally took the plunge and did a full install of Ubuntu to get rid of Windows.

So far, so good.

That said, I suppose I'm not entirely at the point of no return considering I've still got Windows 7 running on my netbook.

Nevertheless, my primary system is now Ubuntu, and I'm happy as a clam.

(Why are clams happy, anyway? Did anyone ask them?)

So there.

Kaaaaaarl, das tötet Leute!!

 

Mein liebes Pupu,

du fehlst mir. 

-Blogger trying to cope with mega-crazy Finnish pangs these days

 

Homeless: The Questions People Ask

I've read a lot of different things about a lot of different people who have moved abroad. For both those at "home" in Canada and here in Germany who have a good sense of Heimat, my overseas moves have been troubling.

When people find out where I'm from, one of two questions invariably follows:

"Why did you leave?"
or...
"When are you going home?"

I've left places for a number of different reasons, often good, sometimes bad. One day, when I feel up to telling stories of my individual homes, the reasons I've picked up and moved so often in the last eight years may become apparent.

For now, though, I'll try to tackle these two rather loaded questions.

Why did you leave?

I don't exactly remember how the quotation I once read goes anymore, but it went along the lines of that, in order to be an expatriate, you have to be a little bit brave, and a little bit of a dreamer.

I'd say it's rather true. Perhaps it's not such a shock for people who move somewhere for a specific job (or maybe it is, I wouldn't know), but the idea of moving somewhere you don't really know, where you know nobody, have no idea where you'll find a place to live, or if you'll be able to find work to finance those rent payments can be rather scary.

It's really easy to pussy foot around the idea and plan, plan, plan. I kind of liken it to standing at an outdoor pool with a cold wind giving you goose bumps. You know you have to jump into the water, but you have no idea if that water is ice cold or blazing hot, deep, shallow, or possibly full of sharks. You've got the option of toeing the water to test it out or jumping straight in. Sometimes I wonder if it's just better to dive right in and see what you're dealing with when you've actually got to deal with it.

Moving abroad, even to a place you're familiar with, can be an extraordinary shock in both good and bad ways. It's definitely a fun, albeit expensive, way to see what you're actually made of.

That said...

Someone once told me that it doesn't matter how far away you move, you'll never be able to run away from yourself.

This is true. Believe me, I've tried.

The first time I came over here, I ran away, and wasn't all too pleased when I found out I was still stuck with myself at the end.

The other two overseas moves have happened at certain times when I couldn't take the way my life was going. (The smaller moves have had different reasons entirely.)

There's nothing like an overseas move to shock your system into trying to do something different.

And, though you're always stuck with yourself at an end, living halfway across the globe often (albeit not always) makes your old reality seem a little less real, and thus less painful. That being said, if your past still catches up to you -- which it invariably does 100 percent of the time -- you can sometimes wonder if you're going crazy because the line between what actually happened in your past life and what you wish had happened can become awfully blurred.

Still, it's hard to tell random strangers you left because you were trying to run away from yourself, even though you already knew it would never work. (Yet here I am, blogging that sort of jibber jabber away...)

So, my official reasons:

1. Canada -> Germany: I wanted to experience something new and different.
2. Germany -> Canada: I knew I wanted to go "home" eventually, so off I went.
3. Canada -> Germany: Money. Plain and simple.

All of these reasons are real and true. They just brush over the fact they were part of larger, more private reasons that ended up tipping the scales in one way or another.

That brings me to:

When are you going home?

First things first (and notice the shift from sentimental to a jerk-Kraut in training):
Why the fuck do you care when I go home? I am more adjusted to life here than many foreigners I know. The whole when-are-you-going-home thing just reeks of "Get out, we don't want you foreign beings in our pure country, mucking everything up."

Overreaction, sure. But the assumption that I'm only here temporarily drives me batty.

I mean, don't misunderstand me. Upon re-entry to Krautland, I did not sign any paper that said "I solemnly swear to stay here until my death day". I'm not entirely convinced I want to spend the next decades here. While there are a lot of super things about Germany, I'm often shocked when I look in the mirror after just five years here; the idea of adding a zero onto that five and then looking in the mirror scares the bejeezus out of me.

Still, when I left Canada the last time, I went with the conscious attitude of "enough is enough". You might get why I actually had enough the day I get around to writing some of my stories of Calgary. But, copious amounts of money required for another overseas move aside, Canada currently has nothing to offer me. It likely goes both ways.

That said, I can think of three specific circumstances I'd move back, none of which are likely to happen ever, and particularly not in the near future. So, the answer to your question is, "I'm not going home." (Read: "I'd prefer to stay in my self-induced exile for the time being, thankyouverymuch."

I haven't committed myself to Krautland for the rest of my life, but I'm not going back. Somewhere new maybe, but not back.

Now stop asking me questions, please. I'm not some weird expatriate exhibit at the zoo.

Night is upon us!

I wake up in the dark.

I walk Maxie in the near-dark.

Soon I will go to work in the dark.

I come home in the near-dark.

Soon I will come home in the dark.

All I hear about these days is how dark it is outside, as if it surprises us every single year. As fall is fully upon us and winter approaches, darkness gets to become just as fun to talk about as the weather.

"Did'ya get that? It's pretty cold and dark, eh?"

The worst part of it all is that I get sucked into it, too. It's probably got something to do with my propensity for bitching about the weather.

But gawsh, it's dark!

Mother Nature, I have two choices for you: either bring summer back, or bring on Christmas so I can start drinking Glühwein at the Weihnachtsmarkt with the Mädels!

Thank you.