AD Asks the Tough Questions

American Dresdner: Have you become a hermit?
Jasmine E. Michaelson: Well, hermit is such a harsh word.
AD: Let me rephrase that. How many times have you left the apartment in the last three days?
JEM: Twice.
AD: What did you do?
JEM: I met Jake for lunch one time and the other time I took out the garbage.
AD: Taking out the garbage does not count as leaving the apartment.
JEM: Why not? I had to put on shoes.
AD: Did you tie them?
JEM: No.
AD: Then it doesn't count. Why have you become a hermit?
JEM: I still disagree with the word choice, but to answer your question, it just happened. I made no conscious decision to become a "hermit" (makes air quotes with fingers). The weather's been really gray and miserable and I just haven't felt particularly motivated to go out and have adventures.
AD: Critics may say you are wasting the chance of a lifetime by being a hermit while living in Europe, something many people dream of doing, but never get the chance to do. What is your response to these critics?
JEM: I can't visit museums and cathedrals and listen to street musicians every day, I'm sorry.
AD: Why not?
JEM: I've got important stuff to do around the apartment.
AD: Like what?
JEM: Like sweeping up dust bunnies, reheating leftovers and writing my awesome novel.
AD: I suppose that's a legitimate use of time. Assuming it's not complete garbage.
JEM: It's not. Only about 45 percent garbage. The rest is self-indulgent drivel.
AD: How much time have you spent on it today?
JEM: About two hours.
AD: And what did you do the rest of the day?
JEM: Took out the garbage.
AD: And that took six hours?
JEM: This interview is over. (Tears microphone off shirt and storms from room in huff.)

Minority Rule

The kid's got a fistful of fliers or coupons or something, and he's right there. Totally unavoidable. A German could avoid it. They can look straight through people when they want to. But for a small town American the encounter is unavoidable. It's like I can't not make eye contact with him. So I do and he's all smiles and jumps into this sales pitch that I don't understand a word of.

I tell him he's got to slow down, my German's not very good, and now he's curious.

Where are you from?

America.

(Rough translation) Really? Wow! I never would have guessed! You look just like a German at first glance!

Then he asks me all kinds of questions. What am I doing here? How long will I live here? What part of the city do I live in? Do I like it here?

And then he says something like, "This made my day, I've never met an American before."

My entire life I've been a member of the majority. Majority religion, majority race. Heck, at my university I belonged to the majority gender. But of all of my majorities, the one that has always been the most unremarkable was my nationality. And here's some kid telling me how cool it is to meet an American.

And I'm thinking this is pretty cool.



JEM

My Prophet

My prophet died last night and I will miss him.



JEM

Con 2: Crap Music

There was a time when Germany made some of the finest music in the world (Beethoven and Bach were both Germans), but sadly, that time is past. Today Germany is world-renowned for producing music that is complete crap.

One genre Germans are crazy for their techno/trance/house music. Please watch the first 60 seconds of this video to get an idea of what this all about. But for heaven's sake don't watch it to the end. Your brain will liquify and drip out of your nose. And this is some of the better stuff.

Techno is to Germany what hip-hop is to the U.S. It's what leaks from the crappy ear buds of every fake-baked, tight-white-pants-wearing, over-gelled-hair-rocking, eyebrow-waxing, Euro-trash young person you will encounter in Germany. I'll try to snap a few spy photos for you of these people, but pretty much if you watch this video you get the right idea. The prettyboy in the yellow shirt spinnin' the beats is a textbook example.

Here's my favorite thing that the teen/tween techno fans do. On their cell phones they have this neat little function where they can play music through these miniscule speakers, which, you can probably imagine, sounds a little bit like a wasp dying in your ear canal. And when these teens get on the tram in a group, they always think, "Hey, you know what this party needs?" (survey crowd of elderly people, mothers with children, and me) "Some juicy beats!" And they crank that itty-bitty speaker as far as it will go with the most mind-numbing song they own and favor us all with a little taste of their coolness. And it's all I can do to keep from gettin' down right there on the tram.

Or stealing their cell phone and crushing it in my teeth.



JEM

Prague Blog

Right after Christmas we spent a day in Prague with some friends.

Don't you want to slap my mouth when I say that? "Yeah, we just buzzed over to Prague. Whatever. (*eye roll and wristy wave of hand*)" But guess what? You can't slap me! Cuz I'm way over here by Prague, and you're, like, wherever you are that's not here! But I'll make you a deal. If you fly over here and are in my presence for more than two seconds, I will let you slap me in the mouth. But until then, and probably after then, and likely even during the slap itself, I will continue to annoyingly rub your noses in the fact that I live within driving distance of Prague.

We'll likely be making a few more treks to this beautiful city, so I won't exhaust it in this one entry. But I did want to share a few photos with you so that A. you can be jealous and B. my primary censor and editor Jake will get off my back about American Dresdner needing to get out of the apartment.

So, here we go! Among the things everyone should see in Prague is the cathedral in the palace.


Horror-movie-tastic! You should go inside, too. Here are some of the things you'll see there:


That's the only really touristy thing we're going to look at today. We'll visit more next time. Now, we're going to look at some weird things that brought me joy. Like this awesome sculpture:


And my former employer raking in the korunas:


While our friends drove on to Austria, we had to hop a train back home, and ended up having to wait it out for a couple of hours in the freezing, dilapidated Prague train station. Here are some things we saw there:


But here was one of the sweetest parts of the whole day for me. We were wandering the train station, killing time, and feeling a little disgruntled after using the train station's rather unsettling public restrooms (the men have to relieve themselves on a wall with dirty water trickling down it and the women don't get the option of using toilet paper — thank heaven I had a pocket pack of tissues, but let's not dwell on this), when we discovered this:

There was some sort of thrift store situation occupying several massive rundown art nouveau halls at one out-of-the-way end of the train station.


I've been to lots of thrift stores, but I've never seen anything like this. Thrift stores are supposed to be in basements and garages and unfinished warehouses. Right? This was some kind of surreal dream.

I'm a big fan of thrift stores. I have been since I was in middle school. I love the hunt and I love imagining the stories behind all these weird clothes and weird things. Some people are squeamish about wearing something a stranger once owned, but I kind of like it. Jake's got a cousin who's a fellow thrift store hound who suggested to me once that maybe clothes can be haunted by their former wearers. I've gotten a kick out of that idea ever since she mentioned it to me. And if ever thrift store clothes were haunted, I think these would be.

So, naturally, I had to take a few home.



JEM

I'll Take That Dimetapp Now, Thanks

I just finished knitting my first pair of socks a couple of days ago.

AND I'M REALLY EXCITED ABOUT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!




I'm now taking orders. You can expect to receive your custom socks in 3 to 5 years. Oh yeah, and if you're new and wondering why we have a sledgehammer in our living room, read this.

Bye.



JEM

They Want Blood

As a Mormon, I believe we are all children of God. That being said, I think the 4-year-olds in my Sunday school class are trying to destroy me.

I got the assignment to help teach this class a few months ago. I was initially paired up with this wonderful young mom in the ward who speaks flawless English. My first lesson went pretty well. Preparing it was more work than I've ever put into any church teaching assignment, and in the end it was way too short, but the kids seemed to be attentive and interested. In retrospect, that probably had more to do with my accent and strange way of speaking than any language-transcending child skills. But I taught several more lessons, and they also went pretty well. My German was improving and the kids were starting to get used to me. They weren't perfect. But my teaching partner was always there to wrestle and subdue and chastise when necessary.

But at the beginning of the year, things got shuffled. My partner stayed with the 3-year-olds-turning-4 class, and I moved up with the kids we'd been teaching to the 4-year-olds-turning-5 class. The first Sunday a woman from the Primary presidency came to my class to sit in and help keep the kids in check. They were a bit crazier than normal, but it was tolerable. And I think by the end of class they could tell you that WdR stands for "Wähl das Rechte" ("Choose the Right"), so I consider that a success.

But last Sunday I was alone. In a small room with five children I don't understand 85 percent of the time. And for 45 minutes anarchy reigned. Even the mild-mannered kids were going nuts. And the already nuts kids were going completely postal. Kids were screaming and climbing tables and running through the halls. They were crumpling up the drawings I'd worked on all night to illustrate a story. The most quiet the kids got (when they were all in the room at the same time) was when one girl tripped and smacked her head on a table. While she cried it out and I held her, everyone else watched and said nothing. It was amazing. But it only lasted about 30 seconds. In the end, I think the kids could tell you that I tried to tell some story that involved birds and then we sang a song while one girl angrily and repeatedly hit my songbook.

The reason I share this is because next week I'll be alone again and I am pleading with you, people of the Internets, in all your wisdom, to share any tips you might have on wrangling rabid badgers, I mean 4-year-olds. Keep in mind that verbally reasoning with them is out of the question in my case. I can stay "Stop it", "Listen", "Be quiet", and "Sit down", but I can't be expected to be able to choke out much more than that in German come gametime when the adrenaline is really flowing. Whatever I do will have to be very straightforward and action-oriented. I'm thinking reiterate the rules and figure out some kind of reward system for the kids who are good.

With your help, and God willing, I will live to fight another day.



JEM

Bless This Mess

It's been exactly six months since we landed in Dresden! In honor of the blessed occasion, I am treating you to a grand tour of our apartment as it looked the day we moved in last July and as it looked this afternoon (after I did the dishes and picked up our crap). WARNING: Due to jiggly camera work, watching this video may cause motion sickness, lightheadedness, and nausea. In rare cases it has been known to cause impotence and death.

Obviously, the place still needs some things. A kitchen counter, for example. And maybe at least one thing on a wall. But considering where we started, I think we've done OK. Praise be to IKEA! I don't know what we would've done without cheap Swedish innovation. Because Germans, for all their efficiency and engineering prowess, have sick, sick taste in interior design. We'll talk more about this in the future. To whet your appetite, I'll just say that they have a real penchant for the color peach.

Happy anniversary, Dresden! Thanks for not killing us!

Hugs and kisses,



JEM

Illegal Fireworks? What's that?

Happy New Year! Let's watch as Dresden attempts to turn itself into smoking rubble for the *third* time in history!



JEM

Christmas in Leipzig

This little piece of German Christmas adorableness is brought to you courtesy the generous family from Leipzig that invited us to spend Christmas with them this year. This little pup is their youngest and spent three days alternately hating and tolerating me and mostly adoring Jake. But I never stopped loving her with her constant singing of "O Tannenbaum".

Just for reference Jake knew this family from the mission he served here for the LDS Church about eight years ago. When Jake and I came to Germany for a visit about four years ago, this family put us up for a few days and we had a great time with them. The instant they found out we were living in Germany, they invited us to spend Christmas with them. Bless their beautiful hides. They have three kids, including the little songstress above, who is 3 years old. They also have a daughter who is 8 and a son who is 7. Here are the two older kids tearing it up at Twister:


Leipzig, their stomping ground, is about an hour or so by train from Dresden. The city is roughly the same size as Dresden and home to many wonderful things, among them the world's largest goth convention, which I hope to bring my readers to this spring. We'll probably go on a fieldtrip Leipzig someday, but not today, because we actually spent almost all of our time there this time around napping, eating and going for walks. These activities combined, it is important to note, are basically Germany's national pastime. This is exactly how they spend every holiday. And at Christmas that means three days straight. Here's the crew on Christmas Eve eating wienies and potato salad (plus Grandma and Grandpa and an uncle):



Things I learned this year about German Christmas:

1. While the Weihnachtsfest (Christmas Festival) lasts three days, Dec. 24, 25 and 26, everything really happens on the evening of the 24th, what they call Heilige Abend (Holy Evening). They have dinner and then the Weihnachtsmann (Santa, but literally translated it means "Christmas Man") stops by and delivers the presents personally.

2. When the Weihnachtsmann comes kids have to do something for him to get their presents, usually either sing a song or recite a poem. That's what's happening in this video. He also has a rather direct talk with each of the kids about things they've done well in the last year and the things they haven't done so well. They have to promise to do better in the coming year.

Interesting occurrences:

1. We thought one of the family's pet fishies was acting weird and we thought it was trying to lay some eggs. Turns out it was just dying.

2. We went to a church choir concert and they sang the German translation of a song from "Home Alone", which delighted me to no end.


3. After all the presents were opened and it was revealed that the boy got a light saber, Grandpa emerged with his accordion playing the STAR WARS THEME SONG. On the accordion. It was breathtaking.


4. Jake and I slept in the sauna room in the basement, which led to the following story containing nudity.


Here is a really lame photo of the sauna room with our stuff strewn everywhere. That's the entrance to the sauna there on the right. I wouldn't post this picture except that it's necessary to understand this story.

One thing about Germans is that they're really into saunas. From what I understand, not as much as the Finns, but a heck of a lot more than Americans. (I, personally, don't really get it. I mean I guess it's kind of fun to sit in a really hot shed — but, c'mon. For reals. ) Anyway, something that comes with a love for saunas is a permissiveness for nudity, which is evident here by the shower that's just standing there in the middle of the room.

So, one morning I showered in this uncomfortably vulnerable arrangement (which also has ambient lighting and a radio, but that is not important). Jake was in the room rummaging through his luggage and I was happily washing my hair when the door to the room opened. It was the family's 7-year-old son just stopping by a visit. And allow me to stress here that I am standing buck naked for all to see, protected only by a thin layer of steam on the windows. Rather than doing what I would assume to be the instinctive thing for a boy at that age — quickly close the door and run away in humiliation — the kid COMES IN and takes a seat on my sleeping bag. At this moment I experienced a sensation that I have only previously felt in painful dreams: that of standing naked in front of an audience and there is nothing I can do to hide my nudity without making matters significantly worse. So I just did the only thing I could do and proceeded with my shower while Jake basically wrestled the kid out of the room.

I keep telling myself that Germans are much more comfortable with nudity than we are and that the whole ordeal was no big deal to the kid. But I can't seem to shake the feeling that he had ulterior motives all along.

And with that I conclude the needlessly delayed account of my first German Christmas.

Love,



JEM