krynn1010 (6:49:23 PM): in germany
krynn1010 (6:49:36 PM): where you play hockey under water and save the world

i love you kate =)

City Mouse, Country Mouse

Childhood books often provide striking analogies to real life. In this case, I'm feeling a schizophrenic congruence with the book "city mouse and country mouse," the tragic rather romeo-and-juliet- for-children tale of two mice friends who just can't seem to get past their anthropological differences. In my case, however, i'm half city and half country (A little bit country and a little bit rock and roll...?)
and instead of bringing fights and disagreements over cow milking and fast car driving, this odd duality brings me a butter-churn-full of satisfaction.

Munich is, like most European cities, bustlingly urban but also quaintly nostalgic. It has all the suited-cell-phoned-workers, late-night-discos, and ecclectic metropolitan flair you could want, complete with the occasional tragic infringement of the all so american-urban-accoutrements: mcdonalds, starbucks, and loud, bright colored advertising, written almost entirely in (if rather misused) english. But of course, there are also the narrow cobblestones roads and fading frescoed facades, the regal and intricate churches, patinaed fountains, commemorative statues, and bustling marketplaces that reminds us of Munich's humble pastoral beginnings as an outpost for monks. And there are huge swaths of green, rolling hilled parks with trickling rivers (even the occasional nude sunbather), tumbling waterfalls, daring surfers, natural and articifial lakes, the river Isar which meanders through the city like a sneaky but peaceful blue and green caterpillar.

Really, in Munich, I don't miss open spaces, because there seem to be plenty. It's no Chicago (or Pittsburgh, even), no skyscraper jungle where you only see the sky if you happen to stand in the middle of the road long enough without getting hit by a speeding car to look down the long line of buildings to a small and distant swatch of blue. It is, in fact, quite beautiful in Chicago to witness the genius of the directionally oriented city, when the sun as it sets aligns itself perfectly with the East-West streets and shines blindingly but beautifully directly down that clausterphobic alley of glass. But that is an exception, for in America, the city is usually suffocating. But here, I feel rather at peace with my surroundings, with the pleasant mix between old and new, busy and boring, shiny and crumbling. Which is why I am always so shocked when I step out the back door of my house in Feldafing.

Feldafing has a population of 4,000, but is essentially a suburb of Munich, although the word suburb lacks the necessary romance and brings to mind cul-de-sacs, SUVs and street names which have all decided disgustingly to have a theme, like "shooting star way," "neil armstrong alley" and "moon rock road." No, it's not like that, it's a beautiful little town on a spectacular lake with villas, winding roads, old churches, and a general cozy charm. And it's really in the country. I live on the "outskirts" which means about as far from the lake as you can get. It means that when I sit at the dining room table I'm looking at a giant field, a forest, and quite often a family of deer. When I walk into this (what is now a) vast whiteness with the family labrador retriever, I feel like I'm Peter in Ezra Jack Keat's "Snowy Day," like Polly and Digory stepping through the Wardrobe in C.S. Lewis's "Narnia", the little boy in the wordless "The Snowman" by Raymond Briggs". In other words, it's like a childhood fairytale.

Benni and I have taken many a long walk through magical forests, over white fields, and through frozen creek beds. We've tracked geese over hills, rabbits under fences, and deer across frozen ponds. I've been overwhelmed by the sensation of being surrounded by thousands of footprints in the snow, none of which belonged to a human being but my own, and totally awed by the breathtaking view of the alps silloutted by the setting sun. I fetch cheese, milk, and eggs from the neighboring farm, and watch neighbors transport themselves on horses, cross country skis and wooden tabbogans. I'm Davy Crockett! Tarzan's Jane! Aldo Leopold!

But wait. How can this be? I love the city, I love the rough edge, the action, dancing till 5am, watching my purse, riding the crowded subway, being a part of the throbbing mass of the working, the unemployed, the rich, the poor, the foreigners, the bavarians, the kind, the rude, the children, the grandparents, the whole messy soup of humanity. But I also love the peace of nature, the totally silent moments with just me, the dog, the geese and the trees (hey, they don't call me a treehugger for nothing).

Why did I bring this up, after all? In the last week I've been back and forth between "home" in Feldafing and "the city", Munich, and I've realized how much I love both worlds. It could just be my love for ambiguity and contrast (what hippie-liberal-eurofetishfull-treehugger loves the NFL and the Steelers with such fervor?) but I've come to the conclusion that I'm more than happy to house both city and country mouse in mousey-housey-harmony.

getacklt, gesackt, gefumblt, geblitzt...

so i haven´t been writing much. That usually means that what i´ve been experiencing is somehow too large/ complicated/ innappropriate/ amazing or secret for these very limiting and very public black and white letters. And I would say that the last few weeks have been exactly that. I´d be happy to relay you the juicy details (well, some version of them, depending on who you are) in a more personal correspondance. You know the new email address...

But of course, I can write something here. I won´t pretend that the lack of posts didn´t have some small amount to do with laziness. At any rate, i´m sitting at the computer lab at the University during my last week of university classes in Germany and very well for the forseeable future (goodbye studentstatus, sniff sniff) and making the mental (and bureaucratic) journey to the Arbeitswelt: I start my internship on Wednesday, Febraury 1st.

But wait, back up. THE STEELERS ARE GOING TO THE SUPERBOWL!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have to say, as I watched the game yesterday in an Austrailian Pub in Munich, Germany, on SKY satellite with one American and one BRITISH announcer (who said "he just LACED HIM UP" a lot which i found quite disturbing with a british accent) sitting with two French and one Polish friend, and surrounded by an oddball assortment of expat americans, NONE of whom were from pittsburgh, I was struck by that most wonderful of sensations: wow my life is weird.

At any rate, I had the luxury of enthusiastic (and patient) company, who listened faithfully to my broken germ-isch explanation of the rules (und dann wenn er "getackelt" wird, dass heisst dass er "gesackt" war, und wenn er den Ball verliert, er hat den Ball "gefumblt", warscheinlich weil die verteiligung "geblitzt" hat) (ironically enough, blitz is a german word.... so really, when i explained "blitzburgh" i think they understood! mostly...) And the additional luxury of German beer (Iron City, I love you, but i´ll take an Augustiner Helles over IC any day...). And I am ready for the midnight marathon superbowl viewing in two weeks, and am already planning my pre-superbowl party (it starts at midnight here....) All I can say is... "EINE FUR DIE DAUME!!!"

padova summary

and, last but not least. my weekend in padova. faaaaaannnntastic.

walk with benny

and here's my walk with benni. these photo collage things are great!

this is where i live. in the middle of nowhere. isn't it spectacular? and my dog is alio fantastic. 

sledding

Yes. I love my life. Last Saturday I was hiking in the Colli Eugani in Italy, this Saturday I was sledding in the Alps. The landscape was spectacular... mountains, huts, cute little children, and these unbelievable crystalized snow formations. We passed a huge frozen lake where people were skating, and everywhere people were sledding, riding black horses, cross country skiiing..you name it. "Rodeln" as this type of sledding is called is not at all tame.. we took a lift to the top of the mountain and then careened down steep hills and rounded death-defying curves. Steering and braking with our feet. Thrilling and Spectacular. 

unbelievable

....on friday the 13th I accidentally deleted my email address. Unbelievable, i know. It is now:
emilylflechtner@gmail.com

ah, the dangers of gmail. Luckily i backed up my contacts. I still felt strangely empty inside when I lost it all. I can't really believe how attached one can become to electronic data...

if you've written me any love letters in the past year, i can't read them over and long for you anymore. Other than that i've escaped relatively unharmed....

love,

emilylflechtner

unbelievable

on friday the 13th, I accidentally deleted my email account. Yes, my entire email account. Don't ask me how, it's a sad sad story. So my new email is the following: emilylflechtner@gmail.com

It's really rather disturbing how suddenly identity-less and out of contact I felt when I deleted my email address. Perhaps it's for the better that I did a little house cleaning...

For all of you who've written me love letters, however, I can't read them over anymore =(

love,

emilylflechtner

ain't that the truth

"To move freely you must be deeply rooted"--Bella Lewitsky

a poem

mi manca l'italia
i can't believe
sometimes
the things that happen
i want to grab them and put them away
because i'm sure they won't happen again
and here too
i feel that way
like living a dream, which you know will never continue
but rather from which you awake
dissappointed and confused
and now the talk about sleep
reminds me all over again
and so i'm going to sleep
because what else can i do

and then, on the 3rd of january...

jason spoke to me

christmas summary

 

and this is a drawing of my house

 

my house!

 

Fröhes neue Jahr

Right, so new year's eve. Since my normal friends are all home for the holidays, i wasn't quite sure what I was going to do for the evening. The americans are still around of course, and then the other day I got a surprise phone call from Sven...let's see. Sven and I met...well not really...at karaoke at an irish bar. He was sitting at the table next to ours with a girl and they wrote out a slip to request to sing but they refused to turn it in so we turned it in for them. And then we realized that they had requested "stairway to heaven" which in my opinion is a horrible song to sing karaoke to. No wonder she was so mortified. And lame Sven refused to sing with her, so my friend Nicole who was visiting consented to sing along. At any rate I never actually spoke with this Sven but at the end of the night the girl came up to me and asked me for his phone number for him and said something about my eyes. I gave it to her... and then he didn't call me. But coincidentally my friend had gotten his email address because she had taken pictures of the girl singing karaoke and at this point my curiosity was piqued, so i emailed him. He told me i'd given him the wrong number, which I had already thought i might have done, and we met up. But we only hung out a couple of times and then didn't see eachother for a while, so I was quite surprised when he called.

Phew, back in the present. So he mentioned that he had some friends in town and asked if i'd like to come out with them. So I went along, and brought another american friend Christy. It was a low-key evening, and after his rather unfriendly friends from Cologne left, things got going and I got talking to Artur, another friend of the girl. By the end of the evening we'd hit it off (and I learned that he'd just broken up with his girlfriend of six years. six years! jeez!!) and he invited christy and i to his new year's party. Perfect! So on new year's we found ourselves at the apartment of a very nice guy who had just been dumped by his six year girlfriend, and whose apartment actually still belonged to the girlfriend but she was away for the time being and he was staying there until he found a new place. And there were only about 10 people there...but everyone was nice, and there was Raclette to eat, and interactive food is always delicious. So we stayed but had promised to meet the americans for fireworks and midnight. So we left with promises to come back, and took the train to olympiazentrum (the site of the 1972 olympics, the fated ones, and where i play unterwasserhockey). And wow. It was like a war zone. Fireworks are totally legal and apparently that means that everyone should have some, because i think everyone did. And not tiny things. Not bottle rockets. Giant rockets, huge exploding things. Everywhere. By 11:55 our view over munich was an unbelievably spectacular panorama of nothing but fireworks. At midnight it was so loud we couldn't speak. At 12:05 we couldn't see anything because of the smoke. Nothing. It was incredible, and more incredible still was that we remained alive and fully limbed. People were shooting fireworks out of their mouths. There's something about alcohol and crowds that makes people think they're invisible.
And then in a champagne-drunk-muddy (it was raining, thank god for the fire risk, and we sat on my twister mat which got muddy anyways thus our muddy state) state we walked back to the subway and proceeded to fight insane crowds (and i proceeded to suffer an incredible need to pee, which I survived but barely) back to the party, where christy, robert and robert's friend stopped by shortly but then departed to make the last train and I, as always, stayed because they offered me a sofa and fun and sofa is better than no fun and train ride home. It was fun, and in the morning we all went out to breakfast. Me and Niels, Martin, Artur and Andreas, an upright group of german guys. Wahoo for more friends! At any rate I left my digital camera at Artur's which means that i can't post any pictures but also means that i've been invited over to cook dinner with him on wednesday, so i can get my camera. Not too shabby...

And on thursday I have an interview with the paper, because apparently it's newsworthy to be an american exchange student living in a tiny dorf called feldafing and playing unterwasserhockey. They want to publish that embarassing photo of me. Should I let them? ayayay. This is going to haunt my political career forever, I know it ;-)

book to movie to book

i just finished the book "everything is illuminated" by jonathan safran foer, which I thoroughly enjoyed. And then yesterday I was reading through the movie listings for Munich, and I saw that a fim entitled "Alles ist erleuchtet" was playing. Funny, I thought, that's almost an exact translation of the title of the book I just read. And then I clicked on it. Lo and behold, it's the movie version of the book! I had no idea. So today after meeting with my language partner who also studied in padova but is german so we do 20 mins of german 20 mins of english and 20 mins of italian, I went to a small artsy theater in a neat neighborhood i'd never been to and saw the movie. I have to say, on its own it was good but compared to the book it didn't stand a chance, and it left out a huge part of the book and changed a bunch of stuff. But it was fun and I ate peppermint chocolate.

Then I came home and cuddled with the dog and then my host mom read aloud "charlie brown's christmas" to me, because my parents sent me the book as a gift and she wanted to practice her english pronunciation. Then I cleaned my room and finally bagged up all the bottles i've been hoarding because they are each worth 15 cents in bottle deposit, and I feel fresh and clean for the new year. Oh yeah, and Robert Nathenson (friend from highschool) was just in town visiting, which was very nice. We went to the Neue Pinakothek (art museum) on New Year's day which made me feel very cultured. A good start to 2006, I say.