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Tonight Meredith, Michelle, and I had a birthday party for my friend that lives in Germany.
I put up birthday decorations.
We wore cute paper hats.
Meredith and I made a pizza shaped like a bratwurst.
There were party favors.
We played Settlers of Catan. (I won twice, much to Michelle's dismay.)
I made a cake.
(Hoch soll er leben/Hoch soll er leben/Dreimal hoch!)
today's german faux pas.
i was just on rapidgrowthmedia.com trying to figure out who to send a press release to, when i came across this article. as this involves art, coffee, and potentially bicycle delivery, i thought the g-rad community should be immediately informed.
another thing to check out is the actual rowster website. i especially enjoyed the section on coffee 101. turns out i didn't know what coffee beans actually were.
"...wimbledon."
"precisely. where the coffee beans come from."
-- elinor dashwood and edward ferrars, sense and sensibility
instead of bringing my tennis shoes to berlin, i brought a pair of not-quite-broken in riding boots, and my favourite purple high-heeled shoes. before i left, the tendon in my right foot was really hurting, and i thought perhaps it was from six days a week on the treadmill with my broke-down tennies. also, my riding boots are WAY cuter than my sneaks.
i was entirely unprepared for the amount of walking i would be doing in berlin. on the plus side, my riding boots are now completely broken in, and i have increased my threshold for pain.
Ok the original idea behind the "postcards from Berlin" thing was that I would blog a picture a day instead of sending postcards to friends. This failed. I took pictures but never uploaded them. I wrote unblogworthy drivel in my journal.
I didn't really have a good reason for this. I know you all think I was out every night dancing my face off and bumping lines of speed off a (law-abiding!) German hooker's ass, but really I was either:
A) experiencing a bit of stomach sickness;
B) walking around in the rain/sleet/snow;
C) embarrassing myself with my complete lack of German language skills; or
D) all of the above
The classic example of D) was my first trip to the grocery store...
My stomach was upset, so I decided to walk to the grocery store to purchase some tummy-friendly food (yogurt, bread, bananas). First problem: I can't find the food. Patrick told me it was on the lower level, but I can't find the way downstairs. I finally locate the escalator down and - lo and behold! - it's not an escalator at all! It's that same metal, but there are no stairs! Sneaky! I almost slide right off it. I get to the bottom safe and sound, then I realize baskets and carts are upstairs.
About five minutes into my shopping, I am really hitting my stride. Just moseying along, looking at things... All of a sudden a voice comes through the loudspeaker. The only thing I understand is "10". I assume the voice has just said "the store is closing in 10 minutes." I'm running through the produce department, trying to finish shopping and get out before they close.
I'm dreading the checkout. I'm worried I won't have enough cash, and I don't dare use my credit card. The check out lady is ringing me through, then she sees my fruit and says something in German. "I'm sorry. I don't speak German". Through a series of elaborate hand gestures, she communicates that you're supposed to weigh produce before you get to the register. A really hot guy joins the growing line behind me. I start to sweat. I have no idea what to do. I don't see a scale anywhere. Thankfully, the woman gets another attendant to weigh the fruit and print out the little barcode stickers.
I finish checking out; I have enough cash. Everything's OK. I turn to walk away when, in a totally surprise move, the woman behind me snatches the receipt from my hand, then starts talking rapidly to the cashier in German. I'm confused. Hot Guy's amused ("Serves her right, damn monolingual Americans!"). The only thing I understand is "bananas". I finally piece together that I was charged incorrectly for my three bananas. The cashier asks another employee to take me to the customer service counter, where I wait for a fourth person to help me.
While I'm waiting, the man behind me says something to me in German. I smile and say, "Ich sprache keine Deutsch". Usually the fact that I bothered to learn "I don't speak German" in German curries some favour. Not so in this case. The man laughs in my face. In this case, "in" means a mere 12 inches or so away from me. (Now considering Berliners don't even crack a smile when you pass them on the street, the way they flout personal space rules is a bit surprising.) I have no idea why this is happening. Is it the fact that me saying "Ich sprache keine Deutsch" is rendered immediately redundant by my abysmal pronunciation? Or maybe he saw the whole fruit-weighing debacle moments earlier...
The shame of public humiliation was so not worth the $2 I was refunded for my bananas. Also, the store didn't close for another two hours.
I am in love with James McAvoy. In the past two weeks I have watched him in Macbeth, Penelope, Becoming Jane (on the way to Amsterdam and the way back), and Antonement. And now I'm going to blog about him. Not because anybody in the blogosphere cares, but because perhaps James McAvoy will read this, realize that I'm not only in love with him but am also a wildly talented film critic, and decide he wants to (leave his wife and) and take up with me.
James McAvoy is one of the great Scottish actors of our time. (And one of the only...? I can only think of about five Scottish actors right now.) His talent seems superior to that of his directors, as well as whoever decided what his hair should look like in the above films. He can flare his nostrils and pop the veins out on his forehead on cue. I stand mightily impressed.
The real beauty of James McAvoy is that he can go from being totally hot...
To totally not...
...before you can say "haggis".
MacBeth (part of the Shakespeare Retold series) is surprisingly good. James McAvoy plays a chef and does a really horrifying demonstration with a pig's head. The film is really bloody and violent, but this is mainly because much of it takes place in a restaurant kitchen. It's definitely worth seeing if you're a omnivorous foodie, if only to remind you of how distanced we are from our food. Another point in the film's favour is that James McAvoy has a Scottish accent. God, I could listen to a damn Scottish accent all day.
Though he's Scottish, he's had an English or American accent in all the other movies I've seen him in. I really don't know the point of the American accent in Penelope as there are many randomly British characters. The most interesting thing about Penelepe, besides Christina Ricci's prosthetic pig nose, is the set design. Her bedroom is amazing. It's kind of Willy Wonka-meets-Anthropologie. James McAvoy's flat oozes melancholy masculinity with dark oily wood and old leather. Mmm... Yummy!
Becoming Jane is a must-see for all those people who have seen all the Jane Austen adaptation--if only because you have, like myself, seen all those like 50 million times and you need to mix it up a bit. Anne Hathaway's possibly a bit too... eager, but fairly convincing nonetheless. (Convincing enough that I went out and bought myself a damn dip pen.) Be prepared to spend some time arguing with yourself about whether Anna Maxwell Martin is pretty or not. James McAvoy is, of course, amazing! He is most notably hot when boxing. His nearly translucent Scottish skin and wiry muscles are like an Eakins painting come to life. Watching him frolick about in whorehouses and fields with Joe Anderson is almost too good for this life.
Atonement was surprisingly long and dull. The first part of the movie is completely dominated by gratuitous close-ups of Keira Knightley's face. After the sex in the library (WHOOPS! SPOILER ALERT!), the whole thing really goes downhill. Quite literally, actually, as James McAvoy is pretty much walking about for the remainder of the film. As in Becoming Jane and Penelope, he's entirely convincing as totally masculine, yet totally sensitive. He's everything you want in a man, really: highly intelligent, wicked sense of humour, strong sense of duty, loyal, deeply passionate, and coordinated enough to ravage you on a bookshelf.
I cannot wait until Wanted comes out. This movie involves three of my favourite things: James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman, and things blowing up. Unfortunately, it also features Angelina Jolie and her somewhat grotesque mouth.