I would have ranted last week, but it turns out I'm using
cuneiform and I'm supposed to update to the alphabet. Last week, I absolutely could not get
access to my blog while I was on a different computer. Blogspot. Who knew it was as outdated as 8-track tapes, as any kind of tapes?
For years, I had used my old methods, kept my head in the sand while I worked, and I became unfashionable, clunky, a Luddite without even knowing.
Sorry about that.
I'll make structural changes to my site, but in the meantime, I have so much stuff to tell you.
I bought a new shirt for our trip. My husband agreed to take us to Germany. Nick finished his second year of studying German and we traveled there to immerse him in the language. He would be our translator.
Right.
Most people in Germany speak English fairly fluently. It was great for Mike and I. Even I could manage passably well on what I learned in my free Duolingo app, except for the day we stopped at a rest stop on the autobahn.I ordered "a meal in my purse" because the women there didn't understand the word 'take-out' or even 'take-away,' the British word. I watched those women stare at me quizzically, finally understand what I needed, and then laugh a little too loudly. We all laughed together, though I didn't realize then exactly what I had said at the time. I just knew I was an idiot.
An almost ugly American.
The shirt. Right. I told you I bought a new shirt, a special T-shirt for the trip. I needed to wear the correct wardrobe in Europe.
My purple shirt said:
Sorry about our president.
Perdon por nuestro presidente.
Desole pour notre president.
Tut mir leid wegen unseres Prasidenten.
Mijn excuses voor onze president.
I'm sorry I couldn't add the right accents and umlauts there. Blogspot. I couldn't type in the Chinese, the Korean, the Arabic, or the American Sign Language at all.
I'm generally pretty oblivious to people around me. Really, I'm the person who's in the way at the grocery store even when I intend to park my cart where no one will want the products behind it. Inevitably, when I get back to my cart, some poor soul has been trying to pull cat litter off the shelf without disturbing my cart position. I apologize a lot.
So, it took me a few days before I noticed people reading my chest even though I bought the T-shirt to convey an important message there. First, I noticed a gaggle of women looking just a bit too long, but they kept to themselves so I let it be. I was enthusiastic to talk to people in Germany about their opinions of our failing government, but we were on our way to walk a Medieval wall and I didn't want to miss it.
The second time it happened, a man on the sidewalk kept looking at me. I leaned against our parked rental car waiting for Mike and Nick to return from checking into our hotel in Cochem, Boutique-Hotel Lohspeicher, a lovely little hotel on the hillside where the chocolate croissants are divine and the owner is a chef. And of course, they speak English.
At first, as I leaned on the car, I felt a little uncomfortable about this man who seemed to stare just a little too long and was trying to make eye-contact. Sometimes that's a dangerous thing, to make eye-contact with a stranger in a new city. Then, it dawned on me. He was looking at my shirt.
I smiled at him.
He smiled back. Then, he began to speak in perfect English. He was waiting for his wife and daughter inside the store. It was a lovely night, wasn't it?
If I tried to write the dialog with this man, I would miss all his speech patterns and what we said. I'm sorry. I was jet-lagged.
He was a sweet man from Amsterdam. We talked about the problems with the new government in the United States. (You have to say United States because 'Americans,' to anyone outside the U.S., include Canadians, Mexicans, Guatemalans, Colombians, Brazilians, Chileans, and people from every other country in the Americas.) He said he knew that the people weren't the same as the government. If he only knew the divide in the U.S. over anti-Trump and pro-Trump. I didn't mention it.
Eventually, his wife and daughter finished shopping and at the same time, Mike and Nick joined us.
It was a lovely conversation, everyone laughing and talking like friends introduced by a mutual acquaintance. They commiserated with our Constitutional crisis. We talked about the town of Cochem, about Amsterdam, about their vacation and ours. They invited us to a neighboring town where there was a festival with fireworks and wine. And they told us about the best place in town to get schnitzel, Ellis Schnitzelhaus.
My T-shirt started two conversations at Berg Eltz. I was so happy to have finally come to a place I'd seen so many times on Instagram, a stunning castle near Cochem. I'd gotten angry (ugly American) because we were the first to arrive for a tour and had to wait another fifteen minutes because too many people crowded in front of us. It turned out that the wait was worth it.
Two women caught my attention.
"We like your shirt," one said. They were German. They mostly wanted to know what I thought, so I spoke about how many people were protesting, how we were trying to get results of the investigation into the botched election. They asked if knowing what happened to the election would change anything. I looked at Mike and shrugged my shoulders. When, in the United States, do you nullify a Federal election? I talked about the embarrassment so many of us felt when Trump met with Chancellor Angela Merkel and was so rude to her. I talked about the mortifying handshakes with world leaders and how the French President, Francois Hollande put Trump's obnoxious handshake in its place. I could feel myself get more worked up as I spoke. I threw in German words that I knew, trying to make sure these people understood the price of losing the government to Trump's abuses. What's the German word for emoluments? What was the word for what the Indivisibles were doing? Krieg. War. I told them it was a quiet war.
Then we were quiet and I turned around, worried about my gift for hyperbole. Was it too far to say it was a war, a battle against a tyrannical government? Someone else might say so, but I didn't think it was so far from the truth. It just sounded worse when 'blitskrieg' rang in my head. What is the build-up to submitting to a dictator in German? I tried to settle my mind.
Then three other people looked at my shirt, giggled, and elbowed each other. "Mijn excuses voor onze president," one said to another.
"Excuse me?" I said. I'd been obsessed about using the word 'krieg.'
"Your shirt. It says in our language that you're sorry about your president." They were Dutch. These people were excited to see their language in print. They happily taught me how to pronounce it in Dutch. After about the third try, I managed well enough. They too listened to me talk about the struggle against this government, but I kept it together and only threw in a few German words since they were Dutch. But when I had trouble conveying my meaning, when I saw their confusion, I struggled with my German to try to clarify it. I hadn't learned political German, just what I needed to order meals, say please and thank you, and ask where things were. Again, these people were happy to talk about a problem that is really a problem around the world.
I love when something as stupid as a T-shirt can draw together total strangers, people around the world who are not so different after all. And it was a relief to watch them nod their heads to my apprehension about the government in the United States.
Thank you for listening, jules
For years, I had used my old methods, kept my head in the sand while I worked, and I became unfashionable, clunky, a Luddite without even knowing.
Sorry about that.
I'll make structural changes to my site, but in the meantime, I have so much stuff to tell you.
I bought a new shirt for our trip. My husband agreed to take us to Germany. Nick finished his second year of studying German and we traveled there to immerse him in the language. He would be our translator.
Right.
Most people in Germany speak English fairly fluently. It was great for Mike and I. Even I could manage passably well on what I learned in my free Duolingo app, except for the day we stopped at a rest stop on the autobahn.I ordered "a meal in my purse" because the women there didn't understand the word 'take-out' or even 'take-away,' the British word. I watched those women stare at me quizzically, finally understand what I needed, and then laugh a little too loudly. We all laughed together, though I didn't realize then exactly what I had said at the time. I just knew I was an idiot.
An almost ugly American.
The shirt. Right. I told you I bought a new shirt, a special T-shirt for the trip. I needed to wear the correct wardrobe in Europe.
My purple shirt said:
Sorry about our president.
Perdon por nuestro presidente.
Desole pour notre president.
Tut mir leid wegen unseres Prasidenten.
Mijn excuses voor onze president.
I'm sorry I couldn't add the right accents and umlauts there. Blogspot. I couldn't type in the Chinese, the Korean, the Arabic, or the American Sign Language at all.
I'm generally pretty oblivious to people around me. Really, I'm the person who's in the way at the grocery store even when I intend to park my cart where no one will want the products behind it. Inevitably, when I get back to my cart, some poor soul has been trying to pull cat litter off the shelf without disturbing my cart position. I apologize a lot.
So, it took me a few days before I noticed people reading my chest even though I bought the T-shirt to convey an important message there. First, I noticed a gaggle of women looking just a bit too long, but they kept to themselves so I let it be. I was enthusiastic to talk to people in Germany about their opinions of our failing government, but we were on our way to walk a Medieval wall and I didn't want to miss it.
The second time it happened, a man on the sidewalk kept looking at me. I leaned against our parked rental car waiting for Mike and Nick to return from checking into our hotel in Cochem, Boutique-Hotel Lohspeicher, a lovely little hotel on the hillside where the chocolate croissants are divine and the owner is a chef. And of course, they speak English.
At first, as I leaned on the car, I felt a little uncomfortable about this man who seemed to stare just a little too long and was trying to make eye-contact. Sometimes that's a dangerous thing, to make eye-contact with a stranger in a new city. Then, it dawned on me. He was looking at my shirt.
I smiled at him.
He smiled back. Then, he began to speak in perfect English. He was waiting for his wife and daughter inside the store. It was a lovely night, wasn't it?
If I tried to write the dialog with this man, I would miss all his speech patterns and what we said. I'm sorry. I was jet-lagged.
He was a sweet man from Amsterdam. We talked about the problems with the new government in the United States. (You have to say United States because 'Americans,' to anyone outside the U.S., include Canadians, Mexicans, Guatemalans, Colombians, Brazilians, Chileans, and people from every other country in the Americas.) He said he knew that the people weren't the same as the government. If he only knew the divide in the U.S. over anti-Trump and pro-Trump. I didn't mention it.
Eventually, his wife and daughter finished shopping and at the same time, Mike and Nick joined us.
It was a lovely conversation, everyone laughing and talking like friends introduced by a mutual acquaintance. They commiserated with our Constitutional crisis. We talked about the town of Cochem, about Amsterdam, about their vacation and ours. They invited us to a neighboring town where there was a festival with fireworks and wine. And they told us about the best place in town to get schnitzel, Ellis Schnitzelhaus.
My T-shirt started two conversations at Berg Eltz. I was so happy to have finally come to a place I'd seen so many times on Instagram, a stunning castle near Cochem. I'd gotten angry (ugly American) because we were the first to arrive for a tour and had to wait another fifteen minutes because too many people crowded in front of us. It turned out that the wait was worth it.
Two women caught my attention.
"We like your shirt," one said. They were German. They mostly wanted to know what I thought, so I spoke about how many people were protesting, how we were trying to get results of the investigation into the botched election. They asked if knowing what happened to the election would change anything. I looked at Mike and shrugged my shoulders. When, in the United States, do you nullify a Federal election? I talked about the embarrassment so many of us felt when Trump met with Chancellor Angela Merkel and was so rude to her. I talked about the mortifying handshakes with world leaders and how the French President, Francois Hollande put Trump's obnoxious handshake in its place. I could feel myself get more worked up as I spoke. I threw in German words that I knew, trying to make sure these people understood the price of losing the government to Trump's abuses. What's the German word for emoluments? What was the word for what the Indivisibles were doing? Krieg. War. I told them it was a quiet war.
Then we were quiet and I turned around, worried about my gift for hyperbole. Was it too far to say it was a war, a battle against a tyrannical government? Someone else might say so, but I didn't think it was so far from the truth. It just sounded worse when 'blitskrieg' rang in my head. What is the build-up to submitting to a dictator in German? I tried to settle my mind.
Then three other people looked at my shirt, giggled, and elbowed each other. "Mijn excuses voor onze president," one said to another.
"Excuse me?" I said. I'd been obsessed about using the word 'krieg.'
"Your shirt. It says in our language that you're sorry about your president." They were Dutch. These people were excited to see their language in print. They happily taught me how to pronounce it in Dutch. After about the third try, I managed well enough. They too listened to me talk about the struggle against this government, but I kept it together and only threw in a few German words since they were Dutch. But when I had trouble conveying my meaning, when I saw their confusion, I struggled with my German to try to clarify it. I hadn't learned political German, just what I needed to order meals, say please and thank you, and ask where things were. Again, these people were happy to talk about a problem that is really a problem around the world.
I love when something as stupid as a T-shirt can draw together total strangers, people around the world who are not so different after all. And it was a relief to watch them nod their heads to my apprehension about the government in the United States.
Thank you for listening, jules
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