Post 4: Wolleyball

UPDATE: I just got paid today. The tax scale in Deutschland is fair. It's still high (comparatively) but I think it's a good system. More on that later. We are going to München this weekend, and if it doesn't rain too much, it will be amazing. Expect a lot of pictures!



My run home from the river tonight was straight out of Joey Parr’s next short film. So I start walking back home down this side street so I can avoid all the well-to-do Germans who dine in the riverside cafes, and this weird bag lady just starts yelling at me. I’m talking like top of her lungs and as shrill as can be. Naturally I like to avoid confrontation with foreigners; much less scary homeless women so I put in my earphones at walk down one of the more populated shopping streets. A great Silver Jews tune comes on my Shuffle so I start running. No more than twenty meters in front of me there are some guys sweeping the street and they start signaling at me. Once again, I have no idea what they are saying so I just keep running down the middle of the path. In about thirty seconds I hear what my earphones have blocked- a city street cleaner barreling towards me. I’m not kidding when I say that this machine was huge and took up the entire road so I literally could not do anything but run from it, and it was going really fast! So as I’m running away from the possessed machine to the closest street intersection, I almost get blind sided by a Mo-Ped, THEN when I make it to the other side of the street like nine pigeons take off 5 meters in front of me and almost clawed out my eyeballs! This all happened within about 2 minutes which was more or less the exact length of the song. When I took my headphones off and decided to walk instead of run the rest of the way, the bizarreness was over.

INDIAN JONES and THE CINEMA of GERMANS
On Friday night, Brandon, Anthony (our third roommate from Rhode Island) and I went to see the new Indian Jones flick at a theater that played movies in English (or Englisch). A typical German movie theater seems to be like our Movie Taverns- they sell really over priced food and alcohol. The previews were pretty interesting though (to say the least). A lot of advertisements. A lot of scandally clad women riding ice sculpture horses in advertisements. Although I don’t want to waste this blog post on movie reviews, I will say that while the new Indian Jones was entertaining, it was not what I would call a “good movie”. It was basically George Lucas and Steven Spielberg trying to cash in by using old ideas from old movies. Also, I couldn’t care less for Shy LaBoof, and if they make him the next Indian Jones I will be more upset than when Kurt Vonnegut Jr. died.

WOLLEYBALL
The real “meat and potatoes” (if you will) of this weekend was the annual volleyball tournament sponsored by igus. I could go into incredible amounts of detail about how the whole event was set up (you can read more on the igus blog) but I think I will leave it at this…free food and free beer.

Here is a catalog of what I consumed in 8 hours:

• 3 Bratwurst mitt senf (with mustard)
  
• 1 heaping plate of sauerkraut, carrots and potatoes
  
• 2 pork chops
  
• 1 fillet of chicken (if only it were Chic-Fil-A)
  
• 5 pieces of bread
  
• 1 strawberry cake
  
• 2 ice cream cones
  
• 2.5 liters of German beer

BEST. DAY. EVER.

Oh yeah, we played volleyball too. We were really good and actually got 4th place out of 40 teams total. I was a stud and stuffed a German above the net. Here are some pictures for your viewing please:

LOOK LOOK! It’s the “I Like Turtles” kid! I tried to interview him and get him to say “I like turtles” in German so I could post a reply on YouTube and get more hits than my presidential videos (if that’s possible) but he was scared of me and vice versa.

I sent this video out to all of my coworkers

That night we went to a club with our coworkers to celebrate our “victory”. ( FYI, Clubs in Germany don’t have air condition. Heck, no one has air conditioning!) I think it is safe to say that we all had a really fun time. Although I did not end up speaking Spanish like I had hoped I did still make a fool of myself. There was this girl there who I thought looked exactly like Kelly Ferguson…so of course I danced with her for a long time!

Needless to say afterwards all of my great friends had a fun time recounting how I danced with some creepy 40 year old woman who really looked nothing like Kelly! Sorry Kelly…and Cohlby.

Sunday Brandon and I wasted the day away at a local beach. These pictures don’t really do it justice unfortunately. I really like that although Cologne is a pretty big city you only have to drive 20 minutes to find a nice beach with people out riding bikes or barbequing, and of course all of the naked German children you could never want to see!

EURO 2008
The UEFA Euro 2008 soccer tournament is going on right now and Cologne is going nuts. There are so many different nationalities here that every night there is always some celebration going on after a victory- always car horns honking until 4 am! It is a huge deal when Deutschland plays and since I have money on them to win most all of their matches, I hope they do really well in this tournament!

Here’s an example of some of the free branded stuff igus loves to make. It’s a USB soccer player. Pull off his head and there’s 512 mb underneath!

UNRELATED SUBJECT
German is communist. Okay, not really, but the longer I work here the more I find out about the political and economical climate and it really surprises me. Here are just some random thoughts and facts, etc.

• All of the labor rules are made with the worker in mind. Walmart actually got in huge trouble with the German government because they were breaking the law by trying to enforce some kind of new employee rule without the approval of the employees first.
  
• I'm getting 5 days paid vacation this summer
  
• Our coworkers HAVE to take off 3 weeks in a row sometime between middle of June and end of August
  
• It is probably impossible to get a job in Germany without belonging to a union, and the unions are huge. For instance, there is only one union representing everyone working with metal, and if this union decides to call for a strike than a substantial part of the German economy stands still.
  
• It is illegal to work 2 jobs
  
• Their unemployment rate is 12% and their real wages are incredibly low compared to their wages
  
• In Germany, there's a general ban on working on Sundays and holidays.
  
• Workers in the west are still having significant amounts of their paychecks going to help rebuild east Germany
  

Now, I should make a disclaimer that I can see how this isn’t exactly bad- it just makes for a stagnant career in a stagnant economy. The typical German works at a moderate wage level for his entire career, and doesn’t change jobs nearly as many times as Americans do. Of course, they also have less stuff, better social security and college is really cheap here. Basically while Americans are killing themselves working three jobs to put their kids through college and try to retire with some money, Germans are working the average 37 hour week, traveling to Mederterrian beaches every summer, and just kind of chillin’ with a cigarette in their hand. My ideal would be to take the best of both, but unfortunately the beer is much better in Germany!

This is a really interesting paragraph I found on a blog from a German Living in the US:

• "Generally speaking, the average living standard in the US is considerably higher than in Germany. More people own their home, houses are bigger, people own more luxury items and have more disposable income. Two caveats are in order: first, the variation in the US is a lot larger, and the poor in the US are poorer than the poor in Germany. Second, as all Germans will hasten to point out, quality of living is not determined by the number of luxury goods alone: Germans have a lot more vacation time, better mass transit, and much fewer worries about health insurance. "

Anyway...

The site counter I’ve set up at the bottom of this page is off the charts. Mom, stop checking this every hour! But seriously, if you think something is interesting or funny, or inappropriate then please leave a comment…just so I know you care.

Oh yeah, speaking of inappropriate, here’s some dialogue from our trip to The Chocolate Museum which will make you chuckle...

setting: Nate, Brandon and Eva looking at a fancy wrapped chocolate bar
Brandon: Schwarze Herren, I’ve had that before it’s really good.
Eva: It means…black men.
Nate: HA!


Until next time, Prost!

Nate