So we went to Dusseldorf for my birthday and took a boat ride on the Rhine, then walked through the old part of town and then up one of my favorite streets, Königsallee. The lux shops are there; Tiffany, Chanel, Gucci, Armani etc… I usually don’t like to window shop but I make an exception in this case. After that we met friends over in Essen for dinner. Germany had spanked England in the World Cup match and everywhere people were out in the streets waving flags, driving around with carloads of people shouting, honking horns. Germany is one big party when their team wins. It is a thing most Americans don’t get to see unless you get out of the country. In football, the teams are American, and it involves one country- America.  Even though I was rooting for Brazil, I am having a blast watching all the excitement of the games. Totally cool.  So this weekend we finally made it up to Hamburg and visited a friend there. We did the tourist thing on Saturday, took a couple of boat rides around the many waterways of Hamburg, We saw the port where our stuff  we shipped from America spent some time. I didn’t know that Hamburg actually has more canals than Venice! And they have the most bridges in Europe ( if I understood the guide correctly). It is a cool city, a bit too many people for me but none the less, I would like to see more. We watched the 2nd half of the Germany- Argentina match in a Thai restaurant. I swear the flat screen tv sellers must have make a fortune when the WM comes around. Damn near EVERY restaurant has a flat screen tv for viewing the games.   The outdoor seating is to capacity as well as the indoor seats.  Some restaurants will close early so their employees can see the game. The nation comes (nearly) to a stop for a couple of hours during the  matches. Half the restaurant was filled with Asian people and they were cheering Germany. It was quite funny to see. We actually found a few seats in the back, so we got to eat and see the game. Germany won big again, 4-0, I don’t think Argentina knew what hit them! Germany plays on Wed. against Spain, I have to work but I don’t know if anyone will come watch the movie, If they do,  I should be out of the theater before 9pm. In any case, I’ll take a radio. After Hamburg, we went on to Lubeck, northeast of Hamburg. Susanne’s friend lives there.  We got to see some of the city, the old part of the city was absolutely beautiful. Everything an old European city is. It has tons of charm, beautiful old buildings, the tiny alleyways that lead to  charming courtyards filled with many, many fragrant rose bushes and flowers. Damn, I sound like Rick Steves! Anyway, I highly recommend this place for vacationers. I have pictures, I will probably post them later this week.

Summer is here and our little apartment is a hotbox. I love the heat, but I have never experienced it in an apartment on the 3rd floor with no air conditioning (thank you Florida for spoiling me!), and west facing windows. WE get all the late afternoon sun and we have big windows. I bought a fan last week, we have beach towels in the windows because the double windows get so hot, I can barely touch them and it helps keep the place at a cool 82 degrees!  LOVE IT!  I am seriously thinking about not cooking for the rest of the summer and we will just eat salads and sandwiches. It’s hotter than hell in the kitchen with the stove on.

Well it’s almost 10:30 and I am still worn out from the weekend. Must be getting old. I will leave you with a couple of dance sides from the 70’s, I love disco and am proud of it. Since I can’t figure out how to put two in the right column, I’ll just put 1 here and 1 there. Then I will give the lightbox plugin another try. Hopefully I will have it working and can display my pics in style for the next post.

Lata! Go dance!

KAREN YOUNG – HOT SHOT

Other things going on besides soccer, I am progressing quickly in my new job. I am still in training, which means I am not getting paid, so I am learning as quick as possible so I can start working on my own and finally start making money. Working with the film and the projector is great, this past week I learned how to take apart a movie, put one together and change the trailers at the beginning of the movies. The movies come in film canisters, usually 5 or 6 canisters for 1 movie. The particular movie that I helped take apart or “un-build”, was Barria, an Italian movie 2 1/2 hours long, 9 film canisters. It took awhile to take the reels apart, but I’ll get faster and I can bring some music with me to play while I work, because it is after the theater is closed. As a kid, I often wondered who worked up in the projection room in the movie theaters. I would ofter look up at the long window, the light from the projector flickering as it played the movie. I never saw anyone though. Now I get to look out that long window down at the audience! WOW!

So I am training a few times a week, nothing is hard, it’s just I have to do everything  by myself in the small theater, lots of small things to learn, from building film to getting the cash drawer ready for the next day and stocking the candy and pop. Thank goodness no popcorn, the theater is easy to clean that way. No plastic cups, the soda and beer (that’s right beer!) come in bottles and the people bring any bottles and candy and ice cream wrappers back to the desk as they leave. I started training with the guy who speak some English, he spent time in Utah studying, so I was able to learn faster with him explaining things to me in both German and English. I trained this week with the son of the man who owns that theater and a few more in Essen and he speaks no English. So I am having to accelerate my language comprehension and speech dramatically. I am still in the integrations course for the moment. I can finish the current module, Susanne and I got that worked out the other day with one of the directors. After that I will have to find another course to register with. There is a morning course at the same school, which would be great, but I have to be on a waiting list to get it. It begins in October, so maybe I’ll get lucky. My brain is tired though, it is working overtime trying to learn the language at school and then use the language at work.

And high fives to Susanne, she finished her US taxes and they are on their way to America! Living here gives us an automatic 2 month extension for the US taxes. Susanne has gone through a mound of German tax forms, American forms, booklets and lord knows what else. Take about a process! we have to file both here and in America, but there is an exemption thing that says if we make under 60,ooo euros, then we don’t have to pay US taxes, but we still have to file. I make close to nothing, I have one W-2 from Fedex and that’s it. Susanne has made money in both countries. The first time she looked at the German tax forms she cried. Lots of pages of incredibly long words that she had no understanding of. She had a Steuerberater explain things to her to help her get started. Then she had to file twice, here you can file online, but you still have to file a paper copy with EVERYTHING attached! So I ask, what in the hell is the point of filing electronically, when they want (and will) go through every friggin  piece of paper you send? Not going any farther with this. The paper systems here are enough to make you tear your hair out!  We are not sure if she will have to pay anything.  There are no calculations or adding on the form, you just put the numbers in and either a person, The Steuerberater( which costs  lots of money) or the tax office after you have sent the forms in. Then they do the math and send back your forms and whether you owe or not. She found out that the tax bureau is having computer problems so she won’t get her forms back for 2 -3 months. OMG. Can things get any slower here?

For the people in America, consider yourselves very lucky. In most instances in the US you don’t have to wait long for things to get done, that is unless you live in a very rural area. I filed my taxes and got them back within a week! Just moved and need your lights turned on, phone, internet? A few days. Not so here, I know some have disagreed  (see post “We’ll Get It When?”) with me, but for us, our experience has been, THINGS TAKE LONGER HERE, PERIOD.

Maybe I’ll write a sequel to the We’ll get it when post. “Yea, we got it- 2 months later!” lol

Later!

Music Post Today: (look in the sidebar)

I’m feelin’ a little Millie Jackson  like today. Millie was a one of a kind singer back in the day! Some real old skool stuff. Enjoy!

So I start next Tuesday and train a couple of days a week. The woman, Ingrid actually found one of the workers who can speak some English to train me, which is good, I need to understand how to run the projector and the other equipment otherwise one mistake and the film is kaputt. The movies cost over 2000 euro. I will let you know how I progress. With the job comes the decision now, what to do about the integrations course. I asked about what I can do today during break at school and Herr G. said I should stay until the end of June when the module we are working in will end. I can’t just go 3 days a week, so I am probably going to have to stop going there and either find another class in a different school, a morning class, this class is smack in the middle of the day from 1:30 to 5pm, or maybe get a private instructor for a few days a week. I need to continue to learn while I work.  I will get fluent faster that way.

So how is class going? It is okay. We have had a lot of holidays this month. 2 days off for Christi Himmelfahrt, two this week for Phingston, both are holidays connected to Easter. Yes Easter. I don’t know much about it, not my religion. All I know is that I get to stay home and get something done for a change. Class in the middle of the day sucks, quite frankly.  We had another one of those group things, this time we had to get into 4 groups and draw our dream house. Yes folks, I am paying money to draw pictures in class. This time we could pick our groups at least. The teacher told Herr Bomsouhga and myself to not be in the same group because it wouldn’t be fair to the others, he and I can draw pretty well. I said to myself, “screw this, I am not going to have the same thing happen like I wrote about in the last post, so I just sat there until every one had picked their groups (of course with their friends). That left me with the guy who could draw well. Mission accomplished. We made a nice house, he did the exterior, complete with balconies, play areas in the backyard and mountains in the background. I did the floor plan of whatever we decided the house would have. I made a real floor plan, doors, windows,  walls, stairs on both floors, etc… It wasn’t exactly my dream house, mine would have looked like a villa with an indoor lap pool and Roman bath. Oh well, at least it was a much better experience than last time. I actually got up with one of the other guys from our group and described what we had made, which was the point of all this insanity.

Other than that, I am still working on my ecards, I finally figured out (with the help of Susanne), that I don’t have to make every card a process and hammer at it for weeks on end. The cards that are the simplest to make seem to be the best. I made a card for a birthday that took a few days, I worked on it a few hours here and there. She loved it, Susanne looked at it and she loved it. I thought it was not good enough because it didn’t have a gazillion effects in it and it took so little time to do. Just goes to show ya that sometimes simple is better. I am in the middle of another one, this one for the ecard site. Working this way, it is fun again, I can probably get more cards on the site now.

I am getting tired, my eyeballs are not focusing anymore, I have been working on my animations a lot today.

So bye for now!

So whats been going on here since the last time I posted? Susanne decided she wanted to get back in to dancing and went to check out a dance school around the corner. She went to the introductory class and decided it was okay and she wanted to register. She came home with the registration form to fill out and started reading it. Of course they want her to pay by taking the money directly out of her bank account, which is normal here. Its just that when you have the rent, electric, health ins. and lord knows what else coming directly out every month, you feel like everyone has their hands on your money. If  she paid in cash she would have had to pay more. Not sure why, not even going to go there. The registration form said that she had to sign up for a minimum of 3 months and she would have to give 4 weeks notice if she wanted to drop out of the class. Why? I don’t know that either. Usually when one drops out of the class you (out of courtesy) tell the instructor and then stop going. That ” usually” for America. This “usually” is for Germany. I guess this is the norm. Than if she, for some reason, wanted to go back to the class before the three months were up, she would have to pay an extra month. (This is the “roll your eyes part”). Needless to say, she felt like she would be trapped in this class, which was a video dance class, the students watch a video (ex. Micheal Jackson video) and then do the moves. The instructor stands around until the last 10 min. when she then teaches the students 3 new moves. Whatever. She is back to dancing in the little apartment for the moment. The incredible part was that when she asked why there were so many rules for signing up for the class, they guy there said their school had the shortest minimum sign up times most other schools have a 6 month minimum for signing up!

My integrations class okay, there are great days and really, really boring days. Sometimes I feel like I am back in the 2nd grade. But the pros still outweigh the cons and I am learning alot. Yesterday I got all bent out of shape over some stupid group project which I should have just laughed off. We finished the last chapter of the second workbook, it was about how to write and understand an invitation to a wedding or birthday party, etc…Oh boy! After the break, the teacher said we were going to to a group activity. Oh for joy. Some group things are okay I guess, others are really lame. This was really lame. We were given little scraps of paper and on them were 4 types of events: Birthday, Wedding, Summer Festival and a New Years Party.  Who ever got Birthday had to get together with the others who had the same event. So I got up(unwillingly) and went over to my group. Each group was supposed to make a invitation with some colored construction paper and crayons and glue and scissors, Did I mention that sometimes it felt like the 2nd grade? Let me downgrade that to…………KINDERGARTEN! I didn’t know there was colored paper and apparently neither did anyone else in my group, so we got whatever was left, ie. the ugly colors nobody else wanted. For Frau Kay and I (Frau Kay was a clothing buyer back in her country and has a sense of color and design),  this meant having a shitty card. For the other two Mr X and Frau B. who have skills in areas other than, say, design, feel for what colors go with what, that sort of thing ( I did say that nicely!), they just wanted to dive in and start putting the shitty colors together. I had them slow down a bit, I tried to explain that we should take 5 minutes and get some idea of what we want it to look like, than I would sketch it out on a piece of paper first. Then we could start cutting and pasting and decorating the card. Frau Kay liked the idea, the other two geabbed the crappiest color for the card, some god awful yellow-orange thing and and then started cutting the blue sheet of paper and pasting it on the god awful yellow-orange thing. At that point I (mentally) threw up my hands and said I want nothing to do with this endeavor, I don’t want to be associated with butt ugly. At this point, Frau Kay was still trying to talk some sense into Frau B and Herr X, she was still trying to participate.

Now the god awful yellow-orange and blue card is underway and the other woman, Frau B. decides to cut another piece of blue for the middle of this monstrosity for the text- the invitation text. Mr X thought we should use the dark purple for this. I had to say something, I told him that the text would be harder to read on the dark purple. He didn’t get it at first and continued to shove the purple sheet of construction paper at Frau B. who was going use the dark purple paper until I said something.  Frau Kay helped me on this point and they ended up using the blue. at least it matches the blue triangles on each of the 4 corners. Before I could say, “okay, Frau Kay and I will work on the design and you and Herr X can do the lettering, don’t glue anymore yet”, Frau B. had already glued the piece of paper for the text to the middle of the god awful yellow-orange piece of paper (the larger one) and she and Herr X proceed to take 30 min. to do the text. It should have took 10 min -at most. How to write the invitation was in our work books. All she would have to do was copy the words and add a date and time and perhaps a name or two. Then we could have gotten on with making the god awful yellow-orange and blue piece of paper pretty. But since it was all now glued together and Frau B was covering the rest of the card with her arms, Frau Kay and I sat there while she and Herr X tried to figure out what to write for the invitation.

So I doodled for a while, someone asked me what I was doing, I just said I was drawing an idea for the card, actually I was just bored and then I  drew a guitar for one of the other groups while I waited for them to finish writing the text. Frau Kay, I noticed have given up and was just sitting there not saying anything. She looked defeated. Then the group I drew the guitar for decided they didn’t need the light purple sheet of construction paper and gave it to us. NOW YOUR TALKIN’! Frau Kay and I perked up. We had two colors that went together, the dark purple and now the light purple. I told Frau Kay, “you know, we can make another card in about 15 minutes!”. We were in motion, we would make the basic design we already had on the god awful yellow-orange and blue piece of paper and then add a cake and some gifts and confetti, nothing too fancy, but it would look good. I was about to cut out the pieces for the card when the teacher comes over and says, “you don’t have enough time to make another card”. WHAT!!!!  Weren’t you the same person who calls me a “profi” (because I  do websites and graphic design) and said before this little project that whatever group I landed in would be the lucky group??? Than let me do my thing, I can throw something together in the next 15 minutes before we have to stop, this is what I do! (of course I said this in my head). So I stopped, Frau Kay and I sat back down and watched the other two still trying to finish the text.

They finally did finish about 5 minutes before we had to stop, I drew a cake and cut a little confetti up, I wanted to cut more but the instructor had by then grabbed up all the scissors and glue. We finished and had the crappiest card in the class. Someone from the group was supposed to do a quick presentation with the thing, they pointed to me, I didn’t gat up, just shook my head no and tried to talk Frau Kay into doing it. In the end the card was just passed around. I sit there thinking to myself, now these people think this is all I can do. I am supposed to be a “profi” (professional) designer. It just goes to show how much an ego can get in the way sometimes. I was mad that the card looked the way it did, if I hadn’t of been so upset, I might have made the the god awful yellow-orange and blue card into something that look half way decent. I had some ideas about how to do it, instead I just gave up.

I would prefer though not to do these stupid group projects, it was a waste of time to me, I know the instructors are trying to have fun in the class but really, we could play some fun word games, light learning. I guess I should get over it, I took is waaaaaayy too seriously!

If it is still hanging up next Monday (yes the teacher hung them up so now other people who have class in the same room can see then too!), I’ll grab a pic of the god awful yellow-orange and blue card and post it!

Another thing I noticed is that I don’t see the daily car chases, cops chasing the bad guys. Back in Ft. Lauderdale it was a daily thing to see on the news, I think is has become a national sport in America. Really, it is a very common occurrence these days on America’s roadways. In fact, I think it ought to have its own channel, Catch Me! TV or something. Here though, there is the Autobahn and the outrageous speeds. People aren’t running away from anything, they are just trying to get from point A to point B, very fast. There is a feeling pride here that they can drive faster here on the freeway than we can in America, but the other side of the coin is the accidents. When I see one on the news (and that is daily), they are horrible. The cars/trucks are unrecognizable, piles of mangled metal, the result of traveling at the speed of light. I don’t see how anyone can make it out alive from one of these accidents.

Other things I haven’t seen here, pimped out cars and trucks, except on tv, there is one show wit this big biker dude hosting it. Sometimes they have low riders bouncing up and down. I think the show is from Munich. I don’t see a lot of spaceship sized RV’s and motor homes. If they are here, someone brought them over on a ship. They don’t exist here, autos and trucks are scaled down here, and there is just not a whole lot of room for really big, gas guzzling vehicles. No big huge plates of food in restaurants and no one (at least from what I have seen and heard), takes a doggie bag home. You eat what you ordered. Period. Though I have heard that the potion sizes have gotten bigger here, Germany is now the biggest as far as weight sizes, in Europe. I read that French people too, are starting to get overweight. Last time I was in Paris, I felt like a cow because everyone around me was thin, they know how to eat sensibly. Or did. McDonalds is there and I read that French people love McDonalds.

And speaking of eating, I gotta eat lunch, the integrations course starts in a little while.

Oh, one more thing I haven’t seen yet. Rick Steves. You know, they guy with the backpack he can live out of for several months. I don’t know what he has in there; it never looks full. I think the bag is a magic bag. New clean cloths appear in it, along with money, a travel guide for wherever he is traveling through and a book of bad jokes. Rick, I know you are out there somewhere! If you’re ever in the Essen area, lets get together and have a cup of coffee. We’ll talk about that backpack of yours!

Later!