After all this recent talk about Dresden and similar fancy-schmancy goings on, you might be asking yourselves: "So, like, what's been happening on Fehmarn?" Well, I sensed your pain across time and space, and I have an answer: It doesn't get dark now until 9.30 at night!
Seriously, that's big news. After five and half months of gray, cloudy weather and no sun after three to four thirty in the afternoon, having natural light for twelve hours a day is big stuff. It's like Christmas from the sky EVERYDAY. It's also produced a kind of primitive response in me that translates into an uncontrollable urge to go outside. I know, it shocks me too. What's even weirder is that I don't even have to DO anything: just being outside seems to be enough. And judging from the reactions of everyone else in town, it seems to be a universal phenomenon, a kind of weather based Pavlovian experiment that draws all the Germans into the open, despite their powerful fear of breezes and any other kind of air circulation.
That doesn't mean, though, that people won't be wearing a heavy winter jacket and a scarf in 75 degree weather. Despite what I like to call "common sense," people, especially children, seem to be uncomfortable going outside if it doesn't mean steaming slowly in their own clothes until their muscles wilt and fall from the bone like a marinated game bird. The phrase "es zieht," literally "it pulls," is a kind of praire dog call designed to warn people against some underhanded and imminent threat to their health. Apparently, any weather that isn't tropical and all around balmy is just a premature death in disguise.
Apart from improving my mood, the weather is great for coffee drinking, something that's become a quasi-daily ritual for me: a nice cup of coffee and a random yet delicious German baked good can go a long way to make any day fantastic. That, and you get the opportunity to watch flies mate. Really. I saw it a couple days ago at the bakery. I was just sitting there, minding my own business, spinning my mug between my fingers, watching the people walk along the street, when I noticed that a fly, no, two flies, were on my tray, and they weren't normal. They were attatched. From behind. Now, I know this doesn't necessarily mean that they were reproducing, but I challenge you to come up with a better explanation. Some might say that they were fighting, but flies are, as everyone knows, a peaceful race that does not know violence. They may be annoying, relentless, or even go so far as chase another insect away from a piece of garbage, but they don't fight. With this in mind, the only plausible conclusion must be that they were, in full view of all those in the bakery, engaged in sexual congress.
Just in case you were wondering, this IS what I do here, that and Star Trek. I drink coffee, go to school, and watch random species reproduce, not necessarily in that order. If I were a tourist, things might be slightly different, but I really don't have the urge to sleep in a camper in the parking lot next to school, so that's pretty much ruled out. I'm not kidding, by the way; people actually pay to come up here and spend their vacation in a parking lot. I'm personally a big fan of campers, but a parking lot? Well, at least the weather is better here than in the rest of county.
Which brings me to a totally unrelated topic: I sat in on the 12th grade today as Andreas did I don't know what, and gave them a little work assignment. They had to read an article on women in the German army, and I told them to write a little something about their opinon for or against it, based on the information in the text. I was supposed to give them a word limit, but I forgot, because I had to explain the assignment several times before they understood it. I'm really not sure what it was about the assignment that they didn't understand, but they kept telling me that there was no question written on the paper for them to answer, so I assume that had something to do with it. See, the German school system, or at least as I've experienced it, trains students to be totally useless if every facet of an assignment or opinion is not literally spelled out for them on a piece of paper. Sure, they "listen" to you while you're telling them what to do, but five seconds later they just look around the room and mumble in German that they don't know what the assignment is. Oh, yeah, that's another thing: they won't tell you if they don't understand something. No, they'll just descend into a kind of intellectual despair that makes Dan Quayle look like Cicero and do absolutely nothing.
When they started "working," they did some work, then went over and looked at pictures on someone's laptop. I'm sure you're asking yourselves why I didn't nip it in the bud before it got to the point of dragging someone across the room in their chair, then pretending to spank them with a giant ruler? Because I REFUSE to tell a room of 18 year olds that walking on the desks and dragging someone across the room is unacceptable; they should know that already, dammit! They're 18! It's just....you know, obvious. Everytime I've been in this class, they've acted like absolute jerks, and teachers keep telling them to "sit down," "be quiet," "don't tear up his paper," and so on, but I decided not to do that. They're not totally guilty in all this: like I said, it's a school system, or at least a school, that doesn't expect the students to be able to think, creating a population of oversized children who have no concept of responsibility, but that doesn't mean they didn't piss me off. Royally. I guess I should say now that I love most of the students at school, really, but this class happens to have the only people at school that I find personally repulsive. I can't stand them. They're 18 and act like they're 6. Sure, they're human, and so I'll give them the respect they're entitled too, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop them from getting a "0" on an assignment if that's what they want. Go ahead, act like asses, it's your grade.
OK, I feel better. Thanks for being there for me.
So, yeah, that's what I've been doing lately.
Seriously, that's big news. After five and half months of gray, cloudy weather and no sun after three to four thirty in the afternoon, having natural light for twelve hours a day is big stuff. It's like Christmas from the sky EVERYDAY. It's also produced a kind of primitive response in me that translates into an uncontrollable urge to go outside. I know, it shocks me too. What's even weirder is that I don't even have to DO anything: just being outside seems to be enough. And judging from the reactions of everyone else in town, it seems to be a universal phenomenon, a kind of weather based Pavlovian experiment that draws all the Germans into the open, despite their powerful fear of breezes and any other kind of air circulation.
That doesn't mean, though, that people won't be wearing a heavy winter jacket and a scarf in 75 degree weather. Despite what I like to call "common sense," people, especially children, seem to be uncomfortable going outside if it doesn't mean steaming slowly in their own clothes until their muscles wilt and fall from the bone like a marinated game bird. The phrase "es zieht," literally "it pulls," is a kind of praire dog call designed to warn people against some underhanded and imminent threat to their health. Apparently, any weather that isn't tropical and all around balmy is just a premature death in disguise.
Apart from improving my mood, the weather is great for coffee drinking, something that's become a quasi-daily ritual for me: a nice cup of coffee and a random yet delicious German baked good can go a long way to make any day fantastic. That, and you get the opportunity to watch flies mate. Really. I saw it a couple days ago at the bakery. I was just sitting there, minding my own business, spinning my mug between my fingers, watching the people walk along the street, when I noticed that a fly, no, two flies, were on my tray, and they weren't normal. They were attatched. From behind. Now, I know this doesn't necessarily mean that they were reproducing, but I challenge you to come up with a better explanation. Some might say that they were fighting, but flies are, as everyone knows, a peaceful race that does not know violence. They may be annoying, relentless, or even go so far as chase another insect away from a piece of garbage, but they don't fight. With this in mind, the only plausible conclusion must be that they were, in full view of all those in the bakery, engaged in sexual congress.
Just in case you were wondering, this IS what I do here, that and Star Trek. I drink coffee, go to school, and watch random species reproduce, not necessarily in that order. If I were a tourist, things might be slightly different, but I really don't have the urge to sleep in a camper in the parking lot next to school, so that's pretty much ruled out. I'm not kidding, by the way; people actually pay to come up here and spend their vacation in a parking lot. I'm personally a big fan of campers, but a parking lot? Well, at least the weather is better here than in the rest of county.
Which brings me to a totally unrelated topic: I sat in on the 12th grade today as Andreas did I don't know what, and gave them a little work assignment. They had to read an article on women in the German army, and I told them to write a little something about their opinon for or against it, based on the information in the text. I was supposed to give them a word limit, but I forgot, because I had to explain the assignment several times before they understood it. I'm really not sure what it was about the assignment that they didn't understand, but they kept telling me that there was no question written on the paper for them to answer, so I assume that had something to do with it. See, the German school system, or at least as I've experienced it, trains students to be totally useless if every facet of an assignment or opinion is not literally spelled out for them on a piece of paper. Sure, they "listen" to you while you're telling them what to do, but five seconds later they just look around the room and mumble in German that they don't know what the assignment is. Oh, yeah, that's another thing: they won't tell you if they don't understand something. No, they'll just descend into a kind of intellectual despair that makes Dan Quayle look like Cicero and do absolutely nothing.
When they started "working," they did some work, then went over and looked at pictures on someone's laptop. I'm sure you're asking yourselves why I didn't nip it in the bud before it got to the point of dragging someone across the room in their chair, then pretending to spank them with a giant ruler? Because I REFUSE to tell a room of 18 year olds that walking on the desks and dragging someone across the room is unacceptable; they should know that already, dammit! They're 18! It's just....you know, obvious. Everytime I've been in this class, they've acted like absolute jerks, and teachers keep telling them to "sit down," "be quiet," "don't tear up his paper," and so on, but I decided not to do that. They're not totally guilty in all this: like I said, it's a school system, or at least a school, that doesn't expect the students to be able to think, creating a population of oversized children who have no concept of responsibility, but that doesn't mean they didn't piss me off. Royally. I guess I should say now that I love most of the students at school, really, but this class happens to have the only people at school that I find personally repulsive. I can't stand them. They're 18 and act like they're 6. Sure, they're human, and so I'll give them the respect they're entitled too, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop them from getting a "0" on an assignment if that's what they want. Go ahead, act like asses, it's your grade.
OK, I feel better. Thanks for being there for me.
So, yeah, that's what I've been doing lately.
posted by Der verwirrte Ausländer at 2:48 AM
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