Pro 2: Amazing Art in Random Places

In the Intermountain West, where I'm from originally, if there is any manmade structure that is pretty or old (100 years old is old) it's treated like diamonds. The city puts plaques and little gardens around it. They get it certified as a historical whatever. The local watercolor society paints pictures of it in every season and from every angle. It is adored.

Something I've noticed here is that pretty and old are the rule, not the exception. There are fantastic sculptures and stunning architecture everywhere. And it's no big whoop. They don't put up plaques telling you every detail about its creation. As a matter of fact, most people don't really seem to notice it at all.

This couple in the photo is flanking the window of a dentist's office. Not a palace or a museum. A dentist's office. I ride by them on the bus all the time, and I love them. But I don't think I've ever seen anyone else look up at them. In fact, the wall just below them (I purposely cut it out of the photo) is splattered with graffiti.

I haven't decided yet if the nonchalance is refreshing or disconcerting, but I definitely enjoy soaking it all in, no matter what the locals think (or don't think) of it. I'll post more pictures of the public art for your enjoyment as I take them.



JEM

Communist Plumbing and You

I feel that our bathroom plumbing warrants a word. You can see here that we do not have a shower. Not that I didn't try to shower when we first moved here. It didn't work very well. Mostly I just splashed all over the non-tiled walls and the place smelled like wet, musty paint for a while. So I relunctantly succumbed to the bath. Before this I hadn't bathed since childhood. Well, in the sense that I didn't sit in a person-sized ceramic bowl of hot water. I did clean myself. I just showered, was all. At first I hated my return to the bath. I hated all the contortions involved with leg-shaving and washing all those parts that aren't very accessible when sitting. But I've gotten my routine down, now, and I thoroughly enjoy my baths. Maybe you can tell from my happy boiled lobster toes in this picture. I even (with my dear husband's help) created a bathtime mix on iTunes. I'd always hated the Beatles' song "Octopus's Garden", but it turns it that's only because I'd never listened to it while scrubbing up in a tub.

But enough about my hygiene. The really interesting thing here is our stunning faucet arrangement. I'm not sure why the communists were opposed to having two faucets in the bathroom, but I have to admit, I find the set up rather ingenious engineering-wise, if not sort of useless. The faucet, as you can tell, swivels between the sink and the tub, and the shower head comes straight out of the sink faucet. Making it impossible to brush your teeth while running a bath. I suppose with my schedule, I can afford to lose a little multi-tasking.

That third fixture, between the shower and the faucet is our washer hookup. The hose runs along the base of the tub and attaches to the washer, which sits right next to your head when you're sitting in the tub. The washing machines drains, as I've mentioned before, but still haven't gotten over, through an open-ended hose that I have to remember to lay in the tub anytime I do a load. So there goes another multi-tasking option: No doing laundry while anyone's taking a bath. Unless they like to bathe in dirty laundry water.

Strange that my amazing Doc Brown bathroom is able to do all the multi-tasking it wants, but in the process it leaves me even less productive than normal.



JEM

Speaking of Radiohead ...

While we're on the subject of Radiohead (sorry, this new album has brought back all my teenage fanboyism with a mighty vengeance), let's enjoy this face-melting tribute from the Pride of Arizona.

I want to kiss whoever is responsible for this.



JEM

Rock 'n' Roll sticks it to the collective man

Have we all gone to www.inrainbows.com and downloaded Radiohead's gorgeous new album "In Rainbows"? You have no excuse not to since it's basically free. The band created it without any record company support and are offering it online for whatever people want to pay for it. (Just a note: If you don't pay anything, Radiohead fans will probably hunt you down and beat you up. Fortunately for you, they're usually pretty scrawny. But they fight dirty. So just be on guard.) It's very mellow and ethereal and (I think) the most intimate and emotional thing Radiohead have produced in a decade. I can't stop listening to it. But mostly I love that they made every record company in the world simultaneously mess their pants by proving that the suits that have gotten fat off recorded music since its infancy are now obsolete. Eat that, suckas.

Beautiful German men

I think that seeing beautiful people anywhere you are in the world is a rare thing. I'm, of course, not talking about cute, pretty, or attractive people. There are plenty of those. I'm talking about the sort of beauty that makes you lose all your train of thought and gape with no regard for what you must look like. The kind of statuesque beauty that should be displayed in a museum rather than walking around with the rest of us mortals. However, on those rare occasions that I saw a person fitting this description in America, it was usually a woman, although there were occasional men. Here it has been exclusively men. I don't want to give anyone the impression that all the men here are Nordic gods. Germany certainly has its share of ogres. But when the right genes come together in a German male, it's pretty spectacular. Today Jake and I were riding the straßenbahn across town, and this guy, probably in his early 20s, gets on and sits next to us. And my husband, who has a flawless record as a strictly heterosexual male, leans over to me and whispers, "He is BEAUTIFUL." And he was. Tall, slender, shoulder-length wavy hair, a perfect angel face and pale blue eyes. It was all either of us could do to keep from staring at him. I told Jake he was probably a vampire. (Just finished "Eclipse"! w00t w00t!)



JEM

Pro 1: Carbs

I love carbs. They're pretty much all I eat. And, fortunately for me, Germans love carbs, too. You can find a bakery every 10 feet with delicious breads and pastries (my favorite is the streuselschnecke, the streusel snail). These pics are from the autumn bread market here early last month. My little guy was called an Ofenmäuschen, or little oven mouse. His ears were a little wonky, but that's OK. I ate them off.

Was machst du?

Yikes! Sorry for not posting in so long.

Today I would like to address the question I am asked most frequently. Well, maybe not most frequently, that would probably be "Are you homesick?", but it is the question that I prefer most to avoid.

In German the question is: "Was machst du hier in Dresden?"

In English it is: "What do you do here in Dresden?"

I don't have a job. I submitted a resumé to a language teaching bureau seeking native English speakers to teach business and advanced English, but never heard back. And I don't go to school. I would love to take one of the immersion German courses at the Goethe Institute here, but they're pretty pricey, and we're pretty poor. So, that answers the first two questions that automatically follow the initial question if I ask for clarification. Work? No. School? No. I also don't have any children, so the plot thickens. How does a person pass nine to 10 hours every weekday all alone in a foreign country with no pressing responsibilities?

Here is how I do it (ideally): Get up, eat breakfast, exercise, bathe and get ready. Do general housework stuff for a while. Study German for two hours. Eat lunch. Run errands (mostly grocery shopping). Then spend the rest of the afternoon working on my novel, which will make us millions so that I can take that German course and Jake can buy computer parts. My goal is 1,000 words a day, and I currently have almost 70 pages.

However, some days are better than others. Here's what happened today: Get up, eat breakfast, exercise, bathe and get ready. Throw in laundry. Study German for one hour. Fall asleep on the couch. Wake up one hour later, deliriously. Make a sandwich and eat it whilst watching "America's Next Top Model" on YouTube. Knit and watch more "America's Next Top Model" on YouTube. Get disgusted with myself. Take out garbage. Take bus to the bank to withdraw week's grocery moolah. Go to the grocery store. Buy milk. Come home. Listen to geeky sci-fi podcast "Escape Pod" (short story about one man's romance with a robot) while I sweep the house and do the dishes. Write in blog. Hate myself for not writing in my novel. End.

Do you think that's what I should tell people?