I have a love hate relationship with my can opener.  It is not the best can opener, it is one of the cheaper models,  the ones with no plastic on the handles. It opens cans slightly better than a using a hammer with a screwdriver. I could have opened the can with my Leatherman but I didn’t want re-fried beans on my knives and I had a P-38 army can opener, but I haven’t seen it since we moved. I used to keep it on my key ring, in case I had to open a can of something somewhere, even in Florida (part of my brain apparently thinks that I still live in the backwoods of Oregon and that I need to keep items for survival on me at all times!) Anyway, I love the can opener because because it opened the can of re-fried beans last night, the beans were a splurge because they are exotic here (Mexican food is exotic here) almost 4 euro a can. I hate the can opener for the reasons stated above.

By now you are probably wondering, “what in the hell do can openers have to do with television”?

Absolutely nothing.  I was making nachos last night before sitting down to watch tv and I was using the damn thing. Call is a cheap lead – in. How can I sum up my tv experience here in Deutschland? Here are some descriptive words: interesting, boring, repetitive, informative, enjoyable, entertaining and downright stupid. In other words, not much different from tv in America. Our cable comes bundled with the rent so we get a basic package. Lots of public broadcasting, which can be great at times, I can learn a lot, but other times boring. They repeat a lot of shows, over and over and over and there many shows with people sitting around talking, talking, talking.

There is one channel- Center TV, I equate watching this channel to watching paint dry. Or maybe I should call it the “just shoot me now” channel, because if I had to watch it for more that 15 minutes, just shoot me, do me a favor. Most of the time all I see on it is camera shots of various nearby cities. They stick a camera on the sidewalk and you watch people walk by, sit at tables outside of restaurants, shots of a factory building, cars in the streets, people eating bratwurst, people shopping, combing their hair – AARRRGGGHHHH. In other words, whatever is going on in front of the camera, no dialog, just people walking down the street. BORING!

There is a lot of soccer of course, handball (like basketball with a soccer net instead of a basket), lots of biathlons and ski jumping. There are also the “watching the paint drying sports”, curling, darts, competitive badminton. I am liking world cup soccer, I like Brazil and Spain. There is baseball at all, no football (I have seen adverts for the Football League here, but I haven’t seen any games), there is basketball, but the professional level is more like college ball in the US. Lots of American movies though, of course over-dubbed in German, so when you see Eddie Murphy, he sounds like a white guy. All the black people in American movies and tv shows are over-dubbed by white people so it sounds funny. The other day Forest Gump was on, of course, no southern accents either, makes for an interesting take on the movie. They like American comedy shows here, King of Queens, Two and a Half Men etc… and love American detective shows. Lots of “crimis” both made here and America, for example, CSI. There is Hanna Montana and Desperate Housewives and a bunch of American cartoons.

They also love reality shows, Big Brother Deutschland is here, it is different in that there is much more sex and nudity shown. We have Germany’s next top Model, Project Runway, and the German version of American Idol, Deutschland Suche Dem Superstar. The same format, singers competing for something, I don’t really know what they get when they win, no recording contract, the guy mentioned something about them getting the love of all Germany. NO COMMENT!  The talent is not as good, I listened to the new Idol contestants online from the Amreican show, and they sound like they are recording now, they all sound great! The contestants from here would have been cut from Idol in the first few weeks, with the exception of two guys who can sing and dance. The French station has a version of The Great Race, but it looks like they only travel around one country and lord only knows when the show actually ends. Looks like it goes on forever. I got bored with it after a while, too long and drawn out. Lots of music programs, I skip most of them, just not that into the music here and I am not going to get started with what they call “Schlager” music, I’ll just say four words, “just shoot me now”, and move on.  There is also many, many programs about WW2, (too many if you ask me), and Egypt and Mongolia, they seem to like these two places here which is cool; I love anything about ancient Egypt.

All in all it is cool to see different things, they are not uptight about the human body here, I have seen nude women and men in commercials, movies, game shows,  it is refreshing not to mention humorous at times!  But like any cable channels, you can flip through the remote and find absolutely nothing to watch too. I watch the music channel Viva, a lot when there is nothing on, it is like MTV, but sadly they have no “Pimp My Ride”!

Wow!  Time has flown by, I can’t believe it has been almost a year (April 30th), that we have been in Germany. Incredible thing is that we stuck it out and are still here. When I say it was a rocky road to get to now, I mean ROCKY!  More like a mountain. The  Rocky Mountains, yes, that’s what it has felt like at times, going up the Rocky Mountains on roller skates.  At times very heated arguments, thoughts of going back to the states and just chucking it all.  The hoops we had to jump through seemed endless and the vision of what I thought would be our life here has morphed into something totally different.   I am saying thank you to Jennifer Hough and Joe Noonan for helping us stay focused,  to stick with our intuition and say yes to living with passion.  THANK YOU JENNIFER AND JOE!  Thank you, thank you, thank you. We sometimes listen to the CD’s from old Quantum calls and the Get Out of Your Own Way course by Jenifer back to back the whole day and it makes a difference in getting out of a funky head space and getting  the energy flowing again.

Last year this time, I never thought I would have started making my ecards and would actually have people sending them.  With Susanne’s help,  this dream I had for the past 3 years is now a reality and I am working on a HTML version of the site so that all can view it and hopefully enjoy the animations.  I am also using the degree I got back in Oregon to do web web design, I have made a few small websites for someone here in Muelheim.  Susanne is making incredible applications for a company in Krefeld that allow people to upload photos for printing on various styles.  She has gone from small projects to working with an application with over 2000 lines of code. She is making herself cloths also, she recently made a pair of pink (what other color is there?) pants and she already has someone interested in making a pair for them.

We survived the winter which was, from what we have heard, a rather exceptionally long and cold one. I am sitting here in shorts as I write, spring is visiting us for a while, it has been in the high 50’s most of the past week. Last year, anything below 60 degrees was chilly after living in So. Florida, but now it is a frikkin’ blessing. I don’t need 4 shirts plus a thermal jacket to go outside anymore and I am not freezing when I am sitting at my computer by the worlds most draftiest door. Susanne is not freezing at work and the sun (when it is out) shines into our apartment again, making it warm in the afternoon. We hesitate to turn off the heat though until we are sure this weather is going to stick around.

I also can’t believe it has been so long since I have posted anything on the blog. I told myself I would not start it then let it fall by the wayside and forget about it. But I tend to put it off nowadays and work on the ecards instead. It feels good to do a bit of writing again, hopefully I still have a few readers left. I haven’t abandoned the blog, just been busy elsewhere and now I gotta go get busy making nachos, Susanne is subtly letting me know (by saying nachos repeatedly), that I should get my arse in the kitchen and start cooking. Good night!