We're visiting our friends Fabienne and Miguel for the New Year - right now Basel is rainy and dreary, so there's going to be lots of indoor time.
Overall, Christmas was nice - Clau and I had a very mellow time just cooking, eating, and drinking. I don't think I would want to do it every Christmas - generally I like having people around - but I enjoyed it one time. We read lots of books and generally were incredibly lazy people.
Not sure what we're going to be doing for the next few days, but it should be a nice time. Probably just going to hang around, talk, maybe play some games or cards or whatever, poke around on the Internet, etc. A nice, lazy end of the year to cap off a nice, lazy holiday...
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Germans at mealtime
One other thing I forgot to mention - Germans have what seems to me to be an odd eating schedule. They eat a small breakfast, a GIANT lunch, and a small dinner. When I say a giant lunch, I'm not kidding - I am generally incapable of putting away as much food in one sitting as they consume at lunch. One time we decided to get pizza for lunch, and each person ate an entire pizza - an entire pizza! I ate my pizza along with everyone else, then tried to fight the oncoming coma.
Also, apparently they can drink a lot more than I can, as evidenced by my still lack of ability to function, two days later, after the holiday party. The funny part is, everyone kept talking about how the night ended really early this time (I left at midnight and I was definitely in the first third of people to leave). They blamed it on the poor drinking planning - the party committee kept shoving alcohol down our throats, so that the pattern went: gluehwein, beer, schnapps, beer, champagne, wine, schnapps, beer, stumble home (well, that was my pattern anyway). Simply a recipe for disaster if you ask me (and it would also explain my having the worst hangover I've had in years, from which I am still not recovered). I did, however, have a great time and spent a lot of time talking to one of the facilities guys, who speaks only slightly more English than my German. A lot of time this is the foreign guy version of the one-night-stand; you meet up with him the next day and wonder how on earth you communicated at all; it's not like you regret it or anything, but it's not something you would normally do, and it's a little awkward the next day trying to make small talk. I guess the inhibitions that alcohol removes include shyness about trying to speak another language.
Also, apparently they can drink a lot more than I can, as evidenced by my still lack of ability to function, two days later, after the holiday party. The funny part is, everyone kept talking about how the night ended really early this time (I left at midnight and I was definitely in the first third of people to leave). They blamed it on the poor drinking planning - the party committee kept shoving alcohol down our throats, so that the pattern went: gluehwein, beer, schnapps, beer, champagne, wine, schnapps, beer, stumble home (well, that was my pattern anyway). Simply a recipe for disaster if you ask me (and it would also explain my having the worst hangover I've had in years, from which I am still not recovered). I did, however, have a great time and spent a lot of time talking to one of the facilities guys, who speaks only slightly more English than my German. A lot of time this is the foreign guy version of the one-night-stand; you meet up with him the next day and wonder how on earth you communicated at all; it's not like you regret it or anything, but it's not something you would normally do, and it's a little awkward the next day trying to make small talk. I guess the inhibitions that alcohol removes include shyness about trying to speak another language.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Happy morning
I am completely mesmerized by this Folger's viral ad campaign. The song and imagery has been stuck in my head for the better part of a week.
Truthfully, I think that web-only ads are a great idea; you can get a little more edgy, you don't have to worry about making it exactly 30 seconds long, and (if done right), you can get a lot of viewership with relatively little investment. Since I work in media, I think about this kind of thing a lot.
Truthfully, I think that web-only ads are a great idea; you can get a little more edgy, you don't have to worry about making it exactly 30 seconds long, and (if done right), you can get a lot of viewership with relatively little investment. Since I work in media, I think about this kind of thing a lot.
More German observations / lessons / stories
1) Germans are generally very polite in conversations; they wait until a person has finished speaking before saying anything. They also think before they speak - noticably; there may be up to five or ten seconds of dead silence in a conversation while a participant thinks of what he is going to say. This is especially noticeable in English, which makes me wonder if they're thinking the entire sentence through in their heads, finally hitting that final verb, then translating it into English where you actually say what action is taking place before describing its effect and object. Or, maybe that's just me.
At any rate, this is a very difficult pace for me to get into - I work with a bunch of type-A personalities, particularly my boss, and a typical work conference for me has absolutely zero silence in it. In fact, it's extremely rare for someone to finish an entire train of thought in a meeting with my colleagues, because usually folks get cut off. It used to bother me a lot, since I'm more of a "listen to everything, formulate theory, and then share my genius" type of person, which doesn't really work - you sort of have to do run-time compilation, if you get my drift.
Unfortunately, this style of conversation carries over into my personal life, which is considered very rude over here. Just as Jerry Lewis is a genius in France, I'm an asshole in Germany.
2) Renting an apartment is extremely difficult. Of course, I expect that this is just Munich, given the very high population density. At first, Clau and I thought that our relatively high budget would exempt us from the common problems, but it turns out that it doesn't; for one thing, although right now we've got a high DINKS income, neither one of us wants our apartment budget to be based on that - we aimed for a price that would allow one of us to quit working (or be laid off, given the current global economy) and still have a halfway decent life (i.e. no wining and dining, but at least not eating spaghetti with butter and salt every night). This decision was also inspired in part by a realization that great, slightly more expensive apartments are shockingly rare - it turned out that about 80% of the apartments we looked at were the same as the cheaper apartments, but the landlord had simply raised the rent to attract a better class of tenant. Personally, I think that's idiotic, unless the landlord was willing to bring the rent down to market value after having attracted said better class of tenant (and none of them were willing to even budge on the rent).
So, after this realization and decision, Clau and I downgraded ourselves to "normal people" status and started looking at cheaper apartments. We probably visited 15 or 20 apartments, and every single one of them had some problem that was either a complete deal-breaker, or else was bad enough to make us wonder if we could live with it for a while (needless to say, considering the tremendous pain and expense involved in renting an apartment, it's not something you want to do frequently). One apartment was perfect but too dark (Clau needs light or she gets claustraphobic), multiple apartments were on a top floor and had slanted ceilings (I get claustraphobic), two apartments had added a bathtub where a standing shower would have made a lot more sense (one apartment even had the boiler bolted about 3 feet over the bathtub! How would you like to have to shower right next to that every morning?). And so on and so forth; dead neighborhood, 4th floor walk-up, horrible layout, minuscule Manhattan-style kitchen, etc. And, of course, a plethora of apartments that were perfect except that the bedroom was not big enough to accomidate our decidedly un-European California King bed.
Last week, we finally found one that we could live with. It has problems: squeaky original floors, only one bathroom (well, cumulatively - there's no toilet in the bathroom, and the toilet is in a tiny closet on the other side of the apartment), only one bedroom (although the dining room could become an office / guest room), smallish kitchen, no parking. But, all of these were problems we could live with.
So, after telling the broker (oh yeah, did I mention that every apartment has to be rented through a broker, and the TENANT pays the broker's fee?) that we wanted the apartment, we had to fill out an application that stopped just short of a DNA profile, then we had to be interviewed by the owners, then await their decision. The good news is that they picked us (and considering the fact that we both just started two-year, open-ended employment contracts, there really wasn't anything against us other than the fact that we're immigrants), so right now we have a tentative move-in date of Mar 1. We'll talk with the current tenant and see if he's willing to move out earlier, but I suspect we will have to wait until Mar 1. Still, we're pretty psyched.
3) Did I say Germans were polite? Generally they are, but there's an exception: the subway. They have NO concept of efficiency or queuing - it's absolutely ridiculous how they shove past one another in this mad rush to get on and off the train. At least in NYC there's an unwritten rule about that - let people off the train, then go on. In fact, I often take out my aggression on folks breaking this rule - I come out that train like a linebacker. In Munich, they just all go into a mad scrum. And yet, in spite of all this, the subway runs like clockwork.
4) Being employed here is awesome; mandatory (and enforced!) 40-hour work week, subsidized lunches, employment contract, 6 weeks of paid vacation per year, etc. etc. Unfortunately, since I still work with New York, I don't really get the benefit of most of this, but it's good to know that if I go somewhere else, I'll be treated nice.
I'm sure there are more words of wisdom to be shared - I'll post them as they occur to me.
At any rate, this is a very difficult pace for me to get into - I work with a bunch of type-A personalities, particularly my boss, and a typical work conference for me has absolutely zero silence in it. In fact, it's extremely rare for someone to finish an entire train of thought in a meeting with my colleagues, because usually folks get cut off. It used to bother me a lot, since I'm more of a "listen to everything, formulate theory, and then share my genius" type of person, which doesn't really work - you sort of have to do run-time compilation, if you get my drift.
Unfortunately, this style of conversation carries over into my personal life, which is considered very rude over here. Just as Jerry Lewis is a genius in France, I'm an asshole in Germany.
2) Renting an apartment is extremely difficult. Of course, I expect that this is just Munich, given the very high population density. At first, Clau and I thought that our relatively high budget would exempt us from the common problems, but it turns out that it doesn't; for one thing, although right now we've got a high DINKS income, neither one of us wants our apartment budget to be based on that - we aimed for a price that would allow one of us to quit working (or be laid off, given the current global economy) and still have a halfway decent life (i.e. no wining and dining, but at least not eating spaghetti with butter and salt every night). This decision was also inspired in part by a realization that great, slightly more expensive apartments are shockingly rare - it turned out that about 80% of the apartments we looked at were the same as the cheaper apartments, but the landlord had simply raised the rent to attract a better class of tenant. Personally, I think that's idiotic, unless the landlord was willing to bring the rent down to market value after having attracted said better class of tenant (and none of them were willing to even budge on the rent).
So, after this realization and decision, Clau and I downgraded ourselves to "normal people" status and started looking at cheaper apartments. We probably visited 15 or 20 apartments, and every single one of them had some problem that was either a complete deal-breaker, or else was bad enough to make us wonder if we could live with it for a while (needless to say, considering the tremendous pain and expense involved in renting an apartment, it's not something you want to do frequently). One apartment was perfect but too dark (Clau needs light or she gets claustraphobic), multiple apartments were on a top floor and had slanted ceilings (I get claustraphobic), two apartments had added a bathtub where a standing shower would have made a lot more sense (one apartment even had the boiler bolted about 3 feet over the bathtub! How would you like to have to shower right next to that every morning?). And so on and so forth; dead neighborhood, 4th floor walk-up, horrible layout, minuscule Manhattan-style kitchen, etc. And, of course, a plethora of apartments that were perfect except that the bedroom was not big enough to accomidate our decidedly un-European California King bed.
Last week, we finally found one that we could live with. It has problems: squeaky original floors, only one bathroom (well, cumulatively - there's no toilet in the bathroom, and the toilet is in a tiny closet on the other side of the apartment), only one bedroom (although the dining room could become an office / guest room), smallish kitchen, no parking. But, all of these were problems we could live with.
So, after telling the broker (oh yeah, did I mention that every apartment has to be rented through a broker, and the TENANT pays the broker's fee?) that we wanted the apartment, we had to fill out an application that stopped just short of a DNA profile, then we had to be interviewed by the owners, then await their decision. The good news is that they picked us (and considering the fact that we both just started two-year, open-ended employment contracts, there really wasn't anything against us other than the fact that we're immigrants), so right now we have a tentative move-in date of Mar 1. We'll talk with the current tenant and see if he's willing to move out earlier, but I suspect we will have to wait until Mar 1. Still, we're pretty psyched.
3) Did I say Germans were polite? Generally they are, but there's an exception: the subway. They have NO concept of efficiency or queuing - it's absolutely ridiculous how they shove past one another in this mad rush to get on and off the train. At least in NYC there's an unwritten rule about that - let people off the train, then go on. In fact, I often take out my aggression on folks breaking this rule - I come out that train like a linebacker. In Munich, they just all go into a mad scrum. And yet, in spite of all this, the subway runs like clockwork.
4) Being employed here is awesome; mandatory (and enforced!) 40-hour work week, subsidized lunches, employment contract, 6 weeks of paid vacation per year, etc. etc. Unfortunately, since I still work with New York, I don't really get the benefit of most of this, but it's good to know that if I go somewhere else, I'll be treated nice.
I'm sure there are more words of wisdom to be shared - I'll post them as they occur to me.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Apartments part deux
We have looked at quite a few apartments at this point, and unfortunately it seems to be impossible to find what we want. We have, however, found an apartment that's close enough where we can both live with it. Fingers crossed!
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Netflix comments
Obviously, I had to cancel my Netflix membership before leaving. At the end of cancelling your membership, they have a section of "please let us know your reason for leaving", which is all radio buttons. Oddly enough, there's no "I'm moving outside of the coverage area" button, nor is there a text box for "other". There's also no area to put in comments. I wanted to leave a parting remark saying "I absolutely love your service and I'll miss it", but there was no place to do that. Weird.
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