Oktoberfest

I went to Oktoberfest yesterday. I wasn't all that pumped about it, really, but I would have felt ridiculous if I hadn't gone at all. People come from all over the world to come to this, and I live literally a mile away. So I went with two vague acquaintances to see what all the hubbub was about. The hubbub, I now know, is about drinking. Of course I knew that Oktoberfest revolved around drinking, but I assumed that there would be the pretense that something else was going on (this is what happens at Mardi Gras, or at weddings). But in true German fashion they don't beat around the bush, and Oktoberfest is really no more than a million tables at which people sit and drink beer. Sure, there are funny clothes and oom-pa-pa bands, but those are all over the place in Germany anyway. Also after around 9 PM the oom-pa-pa music is replaced by techno music.

The drinking, though, is taken very seriously. You can only buy drinks in one-liter containers, and only special Oktoberfest beer is served. I've since learned that this beer contains much more alcohol than normal beer (7% or so). Drinking one of these liters is roughly equivalent, then, to drinking a bottle of wine. But if someone said to you, "Let's go and sit at a table and we'll each drink four bottles of wine and then go on a slide and then almost fall into the train tracks" you would say, "No thank you." But this is, really, all that Oktoberfest is.

What makes it especially deadly is that each drink doesn't seem like a bottle of wine; it seems like one beer. So you don't really notice what you are doing. I've had to use context clues and photographic evidence to piece together the last few hours of the evening. The only thing I'm completely certain of is that I arrived home without losing my wallet, and at some point I must have fallen because I have a big bruise on my hip. Actually I must have fallen twice, because I remember one uncatastrophic fall. We went on this huge slide, and to get to the top you're supposed to step onto this speedy conveyor belt that, theoretically, zips you up. If everyone had been of sound mind, and/or we had been boxes instead of people, this would have worked OK. In reality, it was much slower than stairs because every single person immediately fell down and many of them didn't seem that interested in getting back up again.

So the drinking part of Oktoberfest is dangerous and kind of banal, but the relatively unsung cuisine is much better: the best part of Oktoberfest is probably the pretzels. I love pretzels of all shapes and sizes, and Oktoberfest has the biggest and most delicious pretzels I have ever seen. They are literally about 18 inches across. In keeping with the reductio ad absurdum nature of Oktoberfest, all of the beer snacks are incredibly salty. One guy was selling huge platters of tasteless radishes absolutely covered in salt; this was a short step away from simply paying someone to pour salt down your throat. It was amazing.

Also these two extras from Joe Dirt were at Oktoberfest, which was nice.

Youtube is superior to reality

I have just wasted an inordinate amount of time watching Youtube videos. My current favorites:

The Original Magic Bullet

The real highlight here is the part about the muffins, which starts around the 2 minute mark. Wait for Hazel to come lurching into the shot at 2:15, followed by the mixing of blueberry muffins that look exactly like tar.

My other favorite is the whole family of "Windows 7 Launch Party" videos. I have watched all of them, which took about 30 minutes. The best one is still, probably, "The Introductory Video." If you watch the oven timer you can see that this informal gathering took over two hours to shoot. My other favorite might be the "Turn Your Party Into a Movie!" video. The true aficionado will note that the pictures on the screen are not from the right party, but rather from the "Snap, Shake, and Peek!" party, which features old people and apparently an outdoor portion in which everyone hugged each other. There's something mesmerizing about the sheer audacity of this campaign. They want us to have Windows tutorials at our homes, with our multiracial group of friends, for fun! "Gather round, friends, and we'll install printer drivers and anti-viral software!" Also, who on earth actually puts out balloons at a party?

In other news, I just saw a New Zealand band called "Die! Die! Die!" at a club called 59:1. The band was actually pretty good, like a mix between the Blood Brothers and Tokyo Police Club. But the venue was tragic and extremely Munich. For one thing, there was almost nobody there. 10 people, maybe. That is not necessarily a terrible thing. But the whole place seemed like a simulacrum, somehow. Everything was just kind of off. The DJ before played nothing but Foo Fighters, except for one Marcy Playground (!) song. The walls had, predictably, promotional posters, but for bands who had never even played at this venue (i.e. the posters advertised shows elsewhere in Munich). There were also two framed posters right next to the stage, one of Henry Rollins and one of the Ramones (nothing is more punk rock than tasteful frames). Top it off with a few stickers halfheartedly placed on the bathroom wall, and you have the Epcot Center version of a normal venue.

Q: Wie viel Uhr ist es? A: Party-Zeit!

My roommate, Flo, had a birthday party on Friday. Birthdays are handled strangely in Germany: in America, the birthday boy/girl is usually pampered a little bit. People buy him/her dinner, organize a gathering, whatever. In Germany, you have to shoulder onerous responsibilities on your own birthday. The night before Flo's birthday, he was baking a cake to bring into work. So on your birthday, you are supposed to bring cake and give it to other people! Then you have a big party at which you buy copious amounts of food/drink with your own money, and that of your reluctant roommate, and then tons of people come over and don't bring you anything. No drinks, no presents. So basically on your birthday you have to entertain everyone you know, at great personal cost.

Also, if it is around Oktoberfest, everyone will wear lederhosen. Even though Oktoberfest had not technically started, I guess everyone was welling with so much Bavarian pride that all the men wore lederhosen, and the ladies all wore a dress called a Dirndl, which looks a milkmaid's dress. What's amazing is that there is absolutely no sense of irony about it. As can be seen in this blurry photo, I myself wore a pair of lederhosen; Flo for some reason has two. I found them very funny. Objectively, they are ridiculous. The cut is very unflattering, there is ornate embroidery all over it, and a huge flap at the front which is only used for going to the bathroom. Those who are really with it have complex suspenders, a hat, and special leather shoes. Even though everyone is dressed like lumberjacks at the prom, they dance to techno music and drink complicated shots and do everything else that Germans normally do at a party. It is very surreal to watch a roomful of men in lederhosen dancing to "Blue."

This was the longest social event I've ever been to that was conducted solely in German. I did pretty well for the first hour or so, when it was relatively quiet. But when everyone started pouring in and yakking at light speed, I was completely lost. I found, though, that by concentrating on facial tics and body language, I could figure out my expected contribution to the conversation without knowing what it was about (laugh, nod, say "huh!", etc).

This was very taxing and not a great deal of fun, so I went to sleep pretty early (i.e. around 2). Unfortunately, for complex architectural reasons, the party was still technically going on in my room, while I was sleeping (still in my lederhosen). One girl was somehow under the impression that I was Norwegian, so she shook me awake and started talking to me in Norwegian. If you are very tired, this is the one thing that is bound to make you exceptionally angry and disoriented. I mean, even if I were Norwegian, this would not be a normal thing to do. I think that she spoke no other languages. Anyway, I certainly could not communicate with her, so through gestures I asked her to leave me alone and not steal anything. Ah, new friends!

Terry Eagleton on Richard Dawkins, Marx, Madonna

Interviewer: I’ve been interested to see how Richard Dawkins calls himself a “post-Christian atheist” and talks about celebrating Christmas.

TE: I think, actually, he’s a pre-Christian atheist, because he never understood what Christianity is about in the first place! That would be rather like Madonna calling herself post-Marxist.

Excursus on living online

I'm in Germany, technically. But not really. Really I'm pretty much on the internet, which feels kind of weird. It seems like it was only a few years ago that the interweb was used mainly for watching dancing baby or downloading Green Day albums from Napster. But now I receive almost everything I need from the mysterious world wide web: on a normal day, I conduct a fair amount of my research online, I talk to people on Skype, I waste buckets of time consuming internet idiocy, and I download and watch TV shows (there is a TV in my room that I've barely turned on). Pretty much everything I'm used to in America is available online; I remember the first time I lived abroad, and it was a completely different and much more alienating experience. But maybe that was a good thing. Because I could think, you know, the internet sure is making this living-abroad thing easier, especially as I didn't really want to do it anyway. But then the scary thing is that I live on the internet as much when I'm at home as I do here. So if I'm not in Germany when I'm in Germany, am I in America when I'm in America? Where am I? Living on the wires like Lawnmower Man, I guess.

I think that, since I spend all day reading writers from 100 years ago who were absolutely convinced that their generation was in complete spiritual collapse, I've started to feel the same way by osmosis. Two quotations that have struck me recently:

Péguy: "We are practically specimens ... We are ourselves going to be archives, archives and charts, fossils, witnesses, survivors of these historic ages. Charts that one consults. We are very badly situated. In chronology. In the succession of generations ... We are the last. Practically after-the-last."

Father Zosima (1880!): "We are assured that the world is becoming more and more united, is being formed into brotherly communion, by the shortening of distances, by the transmitting of thoughts through the air. Alas, do not believe in such a union of people."

Also I found a funny thing in the archives: I was reading through the retreat notes from Quickborn, an important Catholic youth movement (someone had written a sort of chronicle of their trips). Mostly it says things like "heard a lecture from so and so" but then without fanfare it announces (my translation): "In the afternoon, around five, mountain sickness broke out. 86 boys and 72 girls suddenly had summer diarrhea." What do you do if 158 people all get diarrhea at once?! I think that it was divine payback for having such terrible handwriting.

Second thoughts

Anyone studying German history should be aware that, in addition to the German language being very difficult already, in ye olden days they made it much more difficult by using an impossible-to-read form of handwriting called Sütterlin Schrift. I did not know of this until today but it is now destroying my life and my vision. The alphabet is reproduced above. Imagine if those squiggles were much sloppier. Look at that lower-case y!

I'm not here to feather my ruffle

I have become newly obsessed with this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArZRWJwKdWs

The highlight is around 2:40, when the holy trinity of sales brokers appears.

First Paul tells us that, if we don't buy his margarine, we can go to hell. In case it's not obvious, he didn't come here to "coo and cuddle."

His successor, Gary, leaves us with the perplexing, "You'd better buy my brand. It's Hawaiian punch. When it comes to other drinks, I'll eat your lunch." The circumstances in which he will eat my lunch are very unclear.

Last up is Ronnie, "giving service with a smile because I know my fate." Years of despair are summed up in this poignant lyric.

Redundancies

[Two posts in one day! I'm making up for lost time and forgot that I really wanted to publicize this]

Academics, beware. We are about to be out of a job.

http://www.chronaca.com/

I don't know quite how to react to this -- on one level, it is somehow tragic. At the same time, I admire the iconoclasm of it, and while I think he's wrong-headed in his attempt to fix American education, at least he sees the problem and dedicated billions of hours to fix it, for what I doubt is very great remuneration. My favorite part is here: this section is designed to show the usefulness of the poster, but does the exact opposite.

I think that when I'm a teacher, I'll assign this as reading for the first week. Then I won't have to waste so much time teaching them that Christopher Columbus sailed to America at the same time as "cossacks first formed into bands in Ukraine."

Dissertating

It's been a while since my last update, faithful reader(s). Rest assured that I am not holding back awe-inspiring experiences. My days have looked, almost without fail, like this:

7: wake up

8-6: work

6-11: I actually don't know what I do during this time. Definitely nothing productive. I watched the German version of "American Idol" and the American version of "Pimp My Ride," which inexplicably appears here without dubbing.

This has been enlivened by bureaucratic inanity and trips to the pool (these are not necessarily separate things; I'll describe the pool at some point later).

My German has been getting better, at least in terms of speaking enough to get around without humiliating myself. People still ask me for directions, though, immediately in English. I don't know why this is. I must exude an aura of fruited plains, purple mountain majesties, etc. I had another massive faux pas at the official registration office (to detail all of these would require a blog of its own). Everyone who stays here more than a month has to register their address. I'm sure there are perfectly good reasons but it seems like a complete waste of time. They didn't ask me any questions or anything; all I had to do was show up, say what my address was, and I was on my way. When could this information ever be useful to the city of Munich? If the mayor of Munich ever wakes up and says, "I wonder where that James Chappel is living," I'll eat my hat. Anyway, I was doing the whole thing in German but it was obvious as ever that it's not my Muttersprache. So the woman decides to switch to her own atrocious English, unnanounced, and she says, "Floor?" (asking me what floor I live on). I understood "Flo" and excitedly said, "Yes, he's my roommate! Do you know him?" (somehow she allowed this lunatic to register, which further demonstrates the absurdity of the process). The other German troubles have been of the unamusing, "I can't really read this even though I need it for my dissertation" kind. This is only funny if you hate me.

Oh, but at the library yesterday, the man told me that I could check out 5 items at a time, so 5 on Thursday and 5 on Friday. Not quite understanding, I said, "Do you mean five o'clock in the evening?" I understood his sentence just as soon as I'd finished mine and wanted to burst into flames. He allowed me a modicum of dignity and did not even respond.

I attended an "expat event" last week, for which I hated myself even before I went. I was trying, I guess, to preemptively ward off loneliness. I'm not really lonely, though, so my heart wasn't in it: my roommate is very friendly and, thanks to Skype, I have talked to my parents and girlfriend far more than I ever have in my life. Anyway, this event was an absolute nightmare. I won't name the event because it's a recurring thing, to which many are very attached, and I don't want them to read this and firebomb my house after looking up my address at the registration office.

Expats are extremely weird people, as a general rule. Almost everyone was over 40, which did not bode well. If a 20-year-old is in Munich, it could be for all sorts of exciting reasons. My reasons are not exciting but at least valid. But most of these people are here for no real reason at all: they've been here for ten years, some of them, and they still hang out with strangers from the internet. The strangest part is that everyone was extremely reluctant to talk about themselves: their pasts, their work, why they live in Munich, why they have no real friends, etc. It was like having dinner with a bunch of serial killers, except, judging by their conversation, their secrets would be extremely boring. I asked people why they had stayed in Munich for so long and the answers were extremely depressing: "Good beer, good food" was the most common one. This is not a reason to live in a country for ten years. This is a reason to go to Applebee's.

One of them asked me how long I was staying, and I said three months. "That's how it always starts," he replied.

Bad Tölz

I had my first, and likely last, Alpine adventure on Sunday. My roommate is apparently very gracious, because he responded to my malapropisms by inviting me to come along with his friends to a "Sommerrodelbahn" at Bad Tölz, a little Bavarian resort about 90 minutes south of Munich, which serves as a ski resort in the spring and tourist/death trap in the summer. At the time I had no idea what a Sommerrodelbahn was—it was described to me in German, and instead of admitting that I had no idea what they were talking about I nodded and said it sounded great.

After a harrowing journey from Munich (open-container laws are much more lax than in the states), we arrived at this big mountain with a chair

lift. After a long walk up a very steep hill, we arrived at a long line, composed primarily of children. You're supposed to take one of these little blue scooters and sit on it while you shoot down this concave path that looks like a luge track. You can see a picture of a very happy family doing this here.

You have almost no control: only brakes. I assumed that, since there were toddlers doing this, it could not be difficult and that one should simply sit there and wait until the end to apply the brakes. This attitude leads to injuries like this one (this is after I cleaned it up with soap; it seemed much more bloody and serious at the time):

Here's what happened: apparently the others had decided that they would all stop after the first curve so that we could ride together. I either was not told this (my contention) or did not understand (the more likely scenario). Either way, the end result was that I came roaring around the first curve, expecting to find open track in front of me but in fact finding four burly Germans. They were yelling "Bremse!", which apparently means "brakes," but I was too flustered to do anything. I don't think I've ever thought before that I was actually going to die, but I seriously did for a split second. I bowled into them and went flying into the woods. Only one of the others was at all hurt (the one in the green shirt in the picture above), and while my injuries seemed deadly serious at the time, in retrospect they are not.

They took it in stride, and had a jolly time telling all of their friends about the idiot American who nearly killed them. I'm always proud to be an ambassador.

My other favorite moment:

Andy [one of the Germans]: "Where did you learn such good German?"

Me [not comprehending the sentence]: "What?"

Andy: "Umm ... Where did you learn such bad German?"