Wednesday, December 07, 2005

I take it Schwarze, like my Herren....

Greetings people. Long time--no update. Well, I have an excuse. I just finished my thesis! Yay for me! Anyway, I’m glad to be moving on from my seeming perpetual Studentinismus (yes, I get to make up German words now), it has been a long haul. Lucky for me, the whole process did not cause too much pain or Kummerspeck.

***Kummerspeck: weight gain caused by emotional stress… literally translated as grief (Kummer) bacon (Speck). Awesome, tasty, yet oh so sad! Here is an article about funny “foreign” words, including this one, from the BBC (it is a few months old, but a fun read).

One issue I did notice, regarding working on my thesis and at Dachau, was that I was having bad dreams. My propensity to curl up before bed with a fat book about a concentration camp, I’m certain, didn’t help. Anyway, I’ve just resorted to lighter nocturnal reading, we’ll see if this helps. One tasty tidbit that, oddly enough, has not turned up in any of my reading, is now going to be a Discovery Channel special: Hitler’s UFOs! That’s right, the Nazis were working secretly on flying saucers, and the Discovery channel is going to finally expose the truth. Here is an article in the Bild where you can read all about it. Please note that this is a badly translated version, courtesy of Google’s language tools.

And here in Munich…well, we’ve seen some snow already, the Kristkindelmarkts are open, and the hot mulled wine is flowing. Tomorrow morning, Todd and I are headed to Hamburg…I am tagging along on Todd’s business trip. It will be interesting to get out of Bavaria and get a glimpse of the north. I hear there is some animosity between the north and south. In my head, I imagine it to be a bit like northern versus southern Californians. Also, apparently, Hamburg has a red-light district which rivals Amsterdam’s, so that should be interesting. Hopefully, I will have some fun pictures to share for my next post.

Before I sign off, I have just one little tidbit to leave you with: Schwarze Herren Schokolade. I occasionally have cravings for real dark chocolate, and this particular brand, Schwarze Herren, is readily available, so from time to time, I pick up a bar. Well, it took me about four months to really read the damn label and realize I was eating Black Man Chocolate, actually, more accurately, Black Gentleman Chocolate! What the hell?
Wouldn’t that be a fun ad campaign to work on?



Hope this finds you all well, and that you are enjoying, or at least, getting through, the holidays....

Tschuss!

-mel