Have you ever seen a less helpful label on a bathroom? First you have to figure out that it *is* a bathroom and not, say, a top editor’s office or a supply closet. Then you have to figure out if you belong in the “WCD” or the “WCH.”
I mean, if they spelled out “Damen” and “Herren” you’d have a chance at guessing it. I was pretty sure I knew what the D stood for, and I was still a little nervous about going in.
At last! Today I started work at Bild-Zeitung, far and away the highest-circulation newspaper in Germany. It sells on the order of 4 million copies a day. USA Today, the top U.S. paper, has a little over 2 million circulation. And there are only a quarter as many people in Germany. So, we’re talking about a very influential newspaper. Oh yes – and it’s a tabloid.
If you go look at Bild’s website, you don’t need to speak German to notice something about it: lots of sex and violence. The print edition has a naked lady on the front page every day. There may also be more naked ladies on the inside of the newspaper – you never know what naked lady news may have broken in the last 24 hours – but you’re definitely guaranteed one on the front page. I think more U.S. publications should consider adding this feature, because it clearly sells papers.
I only went in for a few hours this afternoon, so I can only report that the people are really nice and there’s bottled water for all in the printer room:
It’s sparkly water, of course.
After more than a week of gastrointestinal distress, I finally got a verdict: norovirus. I don’t recommend it. The good news is that I’m going to finally start my fellowship this week. You know, the reason I came over here. This. Yayyyyy.
I just caught a segment on German public TV called “Countdown: Mauerfall.” Mauer = wall; Fall = fall.
It’s totally cool – they’re counting down to November 9, the day the Berlin Wall fell, by showing TV news from that time. I think it’s actually from this date in 1989. Today’s was about people leaving East Germany. A major way to do that was through Hungary, which was starting to do the whole glasnost thing; people waited for days in lines outside the West German embassy in Budapest, while the East German secret police photographed them.
The news also showed interviews with East German vacationers at campgrounds in Hungary who were like, well, we sure hope they don’t close the border and take away our vacation spot just because some people have to go and abuse the privilege of travel to Hungary.
I’m so glad I asked the downstairs neighbor to do my shopping today (my illness being such that I really don’t want to leave my apartment unless it’s for a medical facility). He was fast, and it wasn’t out of his way, which was nice, but most importantly: I got to learn the ultimate German home remedy for stomach problems.
There it is, my friends. This is the value of life overseas: learning that, whatever ails your digestive system, what you really need is pretzel sticks and coke. Two doctors did ask me if I was drinking coke and seemed a little surprised that I wasn’t. I look forward to trying the local folk remedy this afternoon.
Oh hey – another of my National Geographic stories turned up online! It’s about vanilla, which is native to central America but has until recently mostly been grown in Madagascar. I reported this story and the story about silky sifakas at the same time. And get this neat bit of synergy: the silky sifaka is a lemur that lives in a region of Madagascar where a lot of vanilla is grown. Whoooa. Trippy.
I wish I still remembered all the fascinating things I learned about vanilla…but I wrote it 10 months ago, so the details have gotten a bit muddied. I heard a lot of tales about sketchiness in the vanilla trade, but they were way outside of the scope of this short piece, so I didn’t try to confirm them. I did come away from the whole thing with the impression that the only way I was going to be sure any vanilla extract I used didn’t contain any artificial flavorings was to make it myself. Vanilla beans aren’t as expensive as you’d think, if you buy them on the internet, and they’re so much better than the sad, dry, crusty ones they sell in jars at the grocery store.
Yeah, I haven’t really blogged this week. You know why? I’ve been sick. You know the only thing worse than being sick? Being sick in a foreign country. My fellow Berlin-based Burns Fellows turn out to be princes among men and women, and they’ve been taking turns coming to my apartment with bananas, white bread, ginger ale, and other essentials to the life of a person whose digestive system is running completely freaking amok.
I finally went to the doctor today – perky, ponytail, jeans – and she told me it’s probably a virus and to avoid meat, milk, and “Hülsenfrüchte.” That last one stumped me, so she made me write it down, and I just looked it up: legumes. In case you were wondering how to say “legumes” in German. And surely someone was.
So, there’s hope. It’s probably not appendicitis. That was one of the few times I lapsed into English during the appointment. Doctor: [poking at the lower right side of my belly] [in german] “You still have your appendix.” Me: “Ja. I don’t want appendicitis.” Her: [in german] “Then we won’t talk about it anymore.”
I took this picture mostly because I can’t remember the last time I saw someone use an overhead projector:
It’s my German teacher going over the definite and indefinite articles and adjective endings for what must be about the 10 millionth time in her career. It’s certainly about the 10 millionth time I’ve learned them.
The woman in the middle of the picture is a grad student from Berkeley. There’s another grad student from Stanford, a woman from India, two women and one man from Spain, a guy from France, three Russians, and a small cast of rotating characters – today we had a Venezuelan and a guy who may have been French, and late last week there was a Greek woman.
