Twilight Zone mit den Gebrüdern Grimm

In den letzten Tagen habe ich mich aus aktuellem Anlass sehr viel in den diversen Unibibliotheken aufgehalten (ich verfüge mittlerweile über einen Lieblingsplatz, eine Unlieblingstoilette und ein Teepausenritual; das Examen kann kommen!) und habe neben meinem heißgeliebten FU Brain auch mal einen mutigen Fuß in die neue Zentralbibliothek der HU gesetzt. Goes by the fancy name of Jacob-und-Wilhelm-Grimm-Zentrum. Das ist eine hamsterkäfiggleiche Angelegenheit, in der es zu heiß ist, wo es viel zu wenig Arbeitsplätze, zu viele Treppen, zu lange Wege und zu enge Schließfachräume gibt. Needless to say ist sie immer überfüllt und das Brain wirkt dagegen so entspannend wie eine Runde Walgesänge kombiniert mit einem doppelten Scotch. Egal! Die Literatur, die ich brauche, ist in beiden zu haben und ich möchte meine verehrte Leserschaft an dieser Stelle gerne an einigen linguistischen Köstlichkeiten teilhaben lassen, die ich mir in den letzten Wochen einverleiben durfte.

...eherm...

"Die exhaustive Untersuchung der sprachgeographischen Verhältnisse, auch mit Hilfe dialektometrischer Verfahren, ist ein Desiderat."

So reden diese Leute.
Erschreckend verständlich mittlerweile folgenes:

"Bei den Adjektiven wird die Kategorie der Steigerung entsprechend der relationellen Funktion des Komparativs und Superlativs periphrastisch ausgedrückt."

Logen.
Wichtig auch zu erwähnen:

"Bei den Possessiva kommt die zumindest im Galloromanischen wirksame Regel der strikten Voranstellung der Determinanten zur Geltung."

Das ist gut zu wissen, meine Schüler fragen mich ständig nach der Stellung der Determinanten. Auch wollen sie alles über die Einfluss des germanischen Superstrats auf die diphthongierung von vulgärlateinischem [e] und [o] in freier Stellung wissen.
Keine Angst, Kinder, die Grimms und ich erklären euch die Welt!

Potty time on the construction site

Life seems to be full of construction work. A fact that is being illustrated to me every morning from seven o'clock onwards, when the digger in front of my house starts its noisy work and when, upon quitting the field and seeking refuge in the living room of my new beloved palace, I find myself face to face with the mini (but not less noisy) specimen of the same breed doing some earth moving works in the back yard. Argh! and ... ARGH!
But its not really the noisy construction work outside that is most annoying (although, admittedly, annoying it IS!), but the never ending ones inside my fucked up little brain.
Well, the good thing about construction work is that there will be a day, far off as it may appear at seven in the mornning after two months of free wake up calls, when the work will be done and there will be most blissfull slumber and tranquility. That goes for outside as well as for inside roadworks;

A few weeks ago, when Germany was celebrating its reunification, I was having my personal 9th November that same weekend. I met a friend whom I had fallen out with and subsequently not spoken a word to (at least not a civil one) in almost two years. A situation that, despite my attempts to convince my mind to just let go, kept nagging me all that time, as my mind don't let anyone tell it what to do. So every other day, my inner diggers and jackhammers would start their work and just not leave me the fuck alone.
And then I met that same friend for tea and we ... well ... got a grip, so to speak. It seemed so easy and obvious and now the jackhammers in the backyard of my mind have fallen silent.

And then last weekend I met an ex-boyfriend of mine. I hadn't seen or talked to him in well over a year and the last time we spoke was somehow unpleasant. Still I was kind of disappointed to just to just cut him out. And then I met him incidentally. Weird. He said hello and shook my hand. Weird! And after five minutes of being in the same room with him, realisation KISSED me that there wasn't anything in my life that I felt inclined to tell him and that of all the things he talked about, none really interested me. Don't get me wrong, there were no hard feelings whatsoever, I just found him a bit boring and dull company and all my feelings of being unhappy with not having him on my mailing list any more just dissolved into pure air. I felt relaxed. It was like, pardon my french, having suffered from constipation for one and a half years and then finally placing a really nice big Kackwurst into the loo. Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhh, freedoooooooom! Relaxation! Peace of mind and bowels! Now for the figurative pipe of Longbottom Leaf and a nice fire in the fireplace! And to quote the Guru of my teenage years and saviour of all mankind Freddie Mercury: Ooooooooooooooooohhhh, its Bliss!

Now the only thing that's left is the monster digger outside my bedroom window. But you know what; last time I checked, they were repaving the sidewalk and getting ready to pack up.

Getting fishyer and fishyer

The evolution of the Fischkopp .... some recent snapshots from my palace. Chronologically.










We're gonna need a bigger ... fishtank.

There is a gnome in all of us

A man with the voice of Bela B. once told me one of those solid truths: Life ain't always fair.
I every sense of the word. Sometimes it's dark, it's ugly, it's a hairy little wart-ridden gnome throwing stones at you for no good reason. Just because it can.
Today my landlady came round as I will be moving to a new place shortly (YEAY!!!) and she wanted to have a look at the place. (Actually she wanted to show it to peolple interested in renting it, but apparently nobody WAS interested...).
It didn't take long for her to start throwing insults at me, being respectless and generally treating me like a five year old retard. She's only about four feet tall, but she must be the single most evil and poisonous woman in the world. (For reasons of not wanting to be sued out of my wits, lets call her Mrs P.T. O'Knee)
She didn't even look at me when she told me how dirty the place was (There is some dust on the doors but hello! I'm still living here and I WILL clean the place before I leave....) She ordered me to paint the walls before I leave (which was the plan all along) and generally was just a real pain in the bum for no good reason.
And I got to thinking of just how easy life could be if this woman was anywhere near able to behave in a normal, friendly way. But the fact is: she isn't. And she will make my life a lot more difficult before my stay in this house comes to an end and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it.
The little ugly gnome is throwing its little ugly stones and maybe it is trying to teach me something I just haven't quite figured out yet. Something about perseverence and growing with obsacles. Or maybe someone is keeping a score and the more stones I can take the more points I get and maybe, who knows, at the end I will win a washing machine or a set of professional kitchen knives. (A use for which comes to mind immediately when I think of Mrs O'Knee...)
Pondering this theory and going down Kurfürstenstrasse on my shiny new bike I passed some of the most ugly ass hookers I have seen in my life. Ever. (And in plain afternoon light! Do the hookers lined along the street get more beautiful as darkness approaches? That does not make any sense at all! It should be the other way round!)
And I realized that we all have stone throwing gnomes ... but some of them use bigger and more jagged stones than others.
And that's also a good thing about life: Sometimes, when she's in a good mood, she gives you sunshine after the rain. In only a few weeks from now I will be living in a new place with a nicer landlord (because there cannot possibly be a worse one) with the most adorable creature of a man in the world and not have to waste a single thought on Mrs O'Knee ever again in my life. Seems my gnome is ready to exchange stones for flowers...

Things you find in Brandenburg

Jehowa's Witnesses Light!

I've just learned

that Robert-"addicted to love"-Palmer is dead.
And not only is he dead, he has been in a constant state of deadness for the past six years. I wasn't previously aware of the fact that I care much for Robert Palmer, but on hearing this bit of news (or rather olds), I have to say I felt quite upset.
What a shit world, eh?!

Tales from the Crypt

and not the good and entertaining sort muss ich mir ja öfters auf der Arbeit anhören. Gestern aber katapultierte mich die Erzählung einer türkischen Schülerin, nennen wir sie des lieben Klischees zuliebe einmal Ayse, ungefragt und keineswegs sanft auf direktem Wege ... ja, wohin? In's Mittelalter? In die türkische Provinz? Ich glaube, ein Bisschen von beidem.

Ayse ist eine 14jährige, tut mit Leid, Nachwuchsvollpfostin, die letzte Woche sehr durcheinander beim Unterricht erschien. (Also ANDERS durcheinander als sonst...) Sie hatte ganz offensichtlich geweint und war auch immer wieder nahe daran, in Tränen auszubrechen. Natürlich fragte ich, was sie habe und natürlich sagte sie nichts, da jedes Wort sofort und unaufgefordert in einem Meer von Tränen und Schluchzen ertrunken wäre. (Ich kenne diesen Zustand, er wurde glaube ich im letzten Jahr nach mir benannt). Also ließ ich sie in Ruhe und wir beendeten die Stunde früher als sonst.
Diese Woche nun erzählte sie mir, der prädestinierten Vertrauenslehrerin der Mittlestufe, was passiert war. Ihr Freund hatte sich von ihr getrennt. Autsch, dachte ich, das erklärt die rotren Augen. Was sich dann aber entsponn war eine Geschichte, die selbt mir, ja MIR, die Worte im Halse stecken bleiben ließ.

Ayse erzählte mir also, dass sie seit zwei Jahren mit ihrem Freund zusammen gewesen war. Ayse ist 14. Hm-hm.
Ihr Freund ist soeben 20 geworden, will jetzt eine Famile gründen und auch gerne mal sein kleines Schwänzchen, es möge ihm abfallen, in Ayse reinstecken.
Hab ich schon erwähnt, Ayse ist 14.
Wow...okay...
Außerdem hat er ihr den Umgang mit anderen männlichen Wesen streng untersagt.
Aha.
Selbst ihrem Cousin, der für sie wie ein Bruder ist.
Aha.
Ich sagte, wenn mein Freund mir was verbieten wollte, ich würde ihm den Vogel zeigen.
Ayse riss ungläubig die Augen auf.
Und wenn Ayse sich doch mal über die Anweisungen ihrers Freundes hinweggesetzt hat, etwas, wie sie es formulierte, "falsch gemacht hat", dann flogen schon mal die Fäuste.
Ayse findet das normal.
Aha?!?!
Zur erinnerung: 14.

Ich war geschockt. All die Standards, die man in einem solchen Fall abspult wie
niemand darf dich schlagen
du bist zu jung zum Heiraten
der darf dich nicht schlagen , das ist strafbar und du könntest ihn anzeigen
er darf dir auch nichts verbieten
das nächste Mal gehst du bitte zur Polizei
das ist unrecht

all das schien auf einmal keinerlei Hebelwirkung zu haben, es war völlig leer. Wie kommt man gegen sowas an? Was kann man da überhaupt noch sagen?

Ich weiß nicht, wie oft ich Variationen von "Das ist nicht normal, das ist nicht in Ordnung" von mir geblasen habe.

Nach 30 Minuten Gespräch entließ ich Ayse mit der Bitte, sich doch in Zukunft bitteschön von niemandem mehr schlagen zu lassen.
Und irgendwie, ich weiß auch nicht, hab ich seitdem ein verändertes Bild von Ayse. Vielleicht ist es Mitleid. Vielleicht ist es auch der Tatsache geschuldet, dass ich zum ersten Mal mit ihr über was fundamentaleres als fucking Verbkonjugation gesprochen habe.

Ich ging jedenfalls ziemlich verdaddelt nach Hause, wo mein Freund mir auch gerne was verbieten wollte. Ich schlug Rauchen vor, was er mir dann auch gleich verboten hat.
Ich hab ihm den Vogel gezeigt.

Life, the Universe and everything

Looking back, the last two years have been like a psychadelic limbo for me, bumping here and there, being completely disorientaded and not getting anywhere, nor knowing where I wanted to get to in the first place. And all this time I was trusting in the Universe to somehow set it right and show me the way.
And then all of a sudden, it went and did just that. Look what I've found:


And I'm not letting go anytime soon.
For the first time in YEARS, the future's not only bright, more importantly I can actually see it. It took me by surprise, but it seems like things are falling into place eventually. I will quit my job in summer in order to have more time for Uni and finally get the hell over with it and out of there. The days of my little crowded and claustrophobic flat will soon be over as well and maybe, who knows, by next year I will finally be something like a grown up person. With a steady job, a boyfriend with a company car and a flat that boasts enough rooms for one of them to be converted into a nursery one fine and distant day.

It all seems odd and I haven't really grasped the whole extend of it.
But I love it.
So thank you, Universe!

What a merry merry season!

Klitzer klitzer auf den Straßen,
Weihnachten,
neue Torte erfunden,
GEHALTSERHÖHUUUUUUUUUUUUNG!!!!!
Finanzkrise my ass.

come out to play ...

...OKAY!

Old traditions never die, they just become slightly annoying. But for Old Times' sake:

KLATSCHKI!!!!!!!!!!!!

ERWISCHT!!!!!!!!

... Klatschki Frieden....!

Just in case you wondered and also to shut up my obnoxious aunts

He said he wanted to pop down to the bookshop and that's the last I saw of him...

My friend Destiny and I

...have not been on speaking terms lately. I felt neglected. I know she has a lot of people to take care of, but I really felt left aside. She hadn't swung her sledgehammer for me in such a long time.
It must have dawned on her that she wasn't behaving all that considerate, so she exchanged her hammer for a bouquet of flowers and slapped me right across the face with it when I was least expecting it (because that is always when these things happen).
And all of a sudden I find myself dancing throught the city streets, my silky hair shining like a prize winning show cow's and smelling of wild berries. The sun is shining, I'm singing old Jennifer Rush songs (don't ask), checking my mail every ten seconds and spend a whole morning combing the city for Ocean Spray and Miss Europa Disco Dancer. My place is neat and tidy for the first time in weeks and I can't remember when last I had so much spare energy!
Sometimes it only takes a little to get you back on track. Like a bouquet of flowers across your face.

No brain, no pain...

In Maischberger's talkshow, Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis (dammit, 300 years ago in France, she would have been decapitated for that name alone), who for some reason that is absolutely unknown to me seems to be of some kind of interest for German TV, recently proclaimed that she saw the conteraceptive pill as a form of abortion.

She also believes that condoms are not even the appropriate means against AIDS, in her opinion, "to prevent AIDS is to shag less". She advises her daughter not to take the pill and prefers those mothers with kids from ten different fathers to women who are childless due to abortion.

Wow. And I thought it was 2008. Unbelievable that a couple of hundred years ago, these people would have had the power to actually inforce their screwed ideas on normal people like us, people who might not have been born with Princess as their first name.

Dear Princess,
please do me a favour and take a stroll around, let's say, Marzahn, where girls are triple and quadruple mothers by the age of 20 and where of the four fathers, NONE is anywhere in sight. Where girls don't have any other kind of education than being teenage moms, living with their 30 year old mother and are highly likely to not produce anything but more teenage moms without jobs.
Oh, and, please, have that AIDS reference translated into Kiswahili, will you?!

Would it also count as abortion if somebody pushed her off a roof?
I wish her parents had used contraception 49 years ago. Well, they must have taken something at the time, as their daughter was obviously born without brains.

Oh, and by the way, my friend Sarah has been working on a project for World Contraception Day and they have produced a couple of funny clips you should check out:

The Party
The Lift
The Messenger

Of age, fabric softener and of LIFE itself

I'm a victim. A vicitm of this culture's ruthless advertising habits.
Today and for quite a while already I had the notion in my head that what I really needed was fabric softener. I have never bought or even thought of buying fabric softener in my life (quite possibly due to some late eighties ad suggesting it was bad to use it).
But lately I find myself wanting my laundry to smell nice when it comes out of the washing machine and also stay that way while it impatiently awaits being worn.

Anyway; I wanted fabulous smelling stuff that would turn my clothes into a pile of...fluff the kind you would throw Teddies in. Not that my laundry smells in any way bad when it comes out of the machine, I just wanted it to smell of ... rosegardens? Summer breeze? I really don't know, I only know that all of a sudden, after twenty eight years of immunity, I thought of fabric softener as a necessary utensil to have.

I reckon this is another one of those phases you go through when you get older. Other people might turn to bleeching their teeth or buying organic food or turning to classical music for no apparent reason. It's what my little sister calls "doing adult stuff". (In the particular situation she coined that expression, the act of doing adult stuff was me buying a toaster...)
The point is, suddenly I acknowledge the existance of things I must have come across a thousand times, but now they get my brain to think about them. And I guess we all come to that point in our lives. In other words: we all have our fabric softener, even if it is bleeched teeth.

Whatever, back to my victimhood.
There I was in front of the supermarket shelf displaying a small but carefully selected range of fabric softeners. I had already put Kuschelweich in my trolly, when I watched my hand putting it back and going for the slightly more expensive version by a rival company, who promised my undies would smell of the sweet and mysterious scent of the Sahara desert. Because "When the desert turns red in the evening sun and the air seems to glow, you get the feeling that almost everything is possible and that everything can happen..." (It REALLY says that on the back of the label!) I want that feeling! Also they put their product in a flash red bottle, instead of a dull baby blue one. HOW COULD I RESIST?????

I admit! I am a consumption slut! I want the smell of Sahara in my clothes! I buy washing up liquid as long as there's plastic fish swimming in it or at least flower stickers on the back. I will prefer products showing Arne Friedrich's face on them to those who don't anytime! While all the time I know that I'm acting horribly stupid and could probably also save some money if I only chose the dull baby blue version of life. This whole consumption thing sometimes works so well on me I feel like I'm floating above my body, watching myself doing everything the advertising industry wants me to.
Maybe I just know too many people who work in advertising. "Hahaaa, I know you're trying to manipulate me, I know the way you people work! ... Give me that really expensive tooth paste with the glittery bits in it, willya...".

The irony is: Sahara scents don't even seem to smell that sweet, as I discovered when, upon coming home, I dipped my nose into the bottle in joyful expectation. It smells like ... fabric softener really. Hm.
I guess life wanted to tell me something. Something about my consumption habits, I just don't see the message cleary.
Well...
Next time I'll go for Summer Breeze.

Highland Serenade

The remnants of once monstrous evil smells still linger in the rooms.
The washing machine has been doing double shifts.
Flocks of Tesco bags cluster in the kitchen drawers.
...and my bank account moans a silent lament.
In short:
I'm back.

Truth is, I have been back for a couple of days, but it was only today on my way back from Aldi that my brain caught up with my body and reunited we look upon the neatly stowed away camping utensils and piles of accurately folded clothing.

The water heating system doesn't work, my pay has not been paid, two papers await being written and I need to teach some private lessons in order to afford the toilet paper.
Yes, the vacation is definitely over.
But still memory lingers. (I know, this is the second time I use this word but I just like it so much, so there, whatcha gonna do about it?!) My nose still seems to smell the heather, the vast mountain panorama is still almost in front of me and my feet will certainly never ever talk to me again.

For a detailed account of my trip, come over for a cuppa or just utter the magic words (anything containing the words "Scotland", "Highlands" or "camping" will certainly do) and I will keep you entertained (or at least keep talking) until the tea turns solid, but in this here entry, I will but shortly intruduce you to some of the best people, places and moments of my first encounter with

The West Highland Way:

Three singing dutchwomen I met on the train to Fort Bill:

Colin, a guy from Dundee whom I met above Blackwater reservoir and who insisted on carrying my backpack down to Glencoe:

Lovely Laura, his girlfriend:

Taking rest on a patch of grass next to wooden bridge crossing a gargling creek. Probably my favourite place in the world.

"Erbsenkopp" they used to call me:

15 minutes from Kinlochleven I asked two gentlemen to take a picture of me so I could prove
a) I was really there
b) I did look like a gay donkey

Ben Nevis, eight o'clock in the morning:

Ben Nevis, half eight in the morning:

Ben Nevis, ten in the morning:

Most days I was alone with THAT for miles on end:

View from out of my tent in Kingshouse, Glen Coe:

The Devil's Staircase and my more than slightly swollen hand:

My favourite place in the world: Glen Coe; I spent about an hour there, just looking around. Recommendable: the water from the creek.

Morning mist in Glen Coe, about eight in the morning:

And here endeth the trip: I took a train that took my back to Glasgow and next year, I'll do the rest of the way.

Hähä, what I've just found:

Rabid pedestrians - the evil of our parks and city centres.

We cherish thee, your Chiliness!

No, not talking about the weather, this is much more profound.

D'you know who's taking over the world? Anthony "Scar Tissue" Kiedis. He's present everywhere these days. Not physically, alas, yet omnipresent in junk TV.
Through meticulous empiric research I found out that there's a Chili Peppers song used as musical background in German crap TV AT LEAST once every ... oh, all the time. Coincidence? I think not!

There must be some kind of plan behind this. Some elaborately set up conspiracy to take over the world which I haven't managed to figure out the details of yet. Cause that's the thing really, isn't it, with elaborate conspiracies aiming at world power: you only see through them when it's too late, when the child has fallen into the well, a saying which sounds even more stupider in English than it does in German.

So, you innocently ignorant people out there: prepare yourself for a rule of chaos and mayhem. I'm reading this guy's biography at the moment and I've got a sneaky feeling this is going to be epic!
(Taking every available and unavailable drug there is, jumping off rooftops into swimming pools - and missing!, wearing socks in unusual places and consuming large quantities of unpaid-for alcoholic beverages only being some of the notions that come to mind for our future world-constitution!)
And also prepare for the counterfeit on coins around the world to look somewhat like this:



All in all, I think the world could be far worse off than having this guy as a king. So,
HAIL TO THE KING, BABY!

In the mood for

TRAVELING!!!!!!!!
19 days to go and my mind is filled with megabus easyjet standard fare national express outbound date of travel blue hostel guide central station NORTHBOUND single or return once more. I spend much more time then I should looking up train connections, bus schedules and all kinds of fares, because planning well is almost being there already! Climax of the day is buying SOCKS (hiking socks, obviously).
So if you catch me muttering something like "15 and a half days to go, hihihihi", at least you now what the heck I'm on about.
I'm loving this!

Explanatory note for all those interested: (yeah, that's you, Keith!)

the P/Q formula

learn something new every day - reloaded

... aka: learn something old every now and then.

Today I did both, learning new things AND old things.
The new thing I learned today is that the Vietnamese-French pidgin, the Tay B'oi, doesn't use articles. A piece of linguistic wisdom which is expected to have, let's say, minor impact on my future life.

The old thing I learned today was to solve equations with two unknowns. I should have learned how to do that in tenth grade, and I tried, I really did. But the much hoped-for enlightenment just wouldn't come. Until today.

While my frech students were busy with a complicated task I gave them, I was reading the script of the MSA maths exam that was lying around on the table. (Apparently, somebody uses my favourite classroom to teach maths!) I was able to solve the first two tasks (yahoo, just as in my maths abitur!), but I got stuck with the third one, an equation with two unknowns. I got halfway through, but for dear life just couldn't remeber how to get rid of the scond "x". Needless to say, that circumstance drove me nuts. So I asked my collegue (one of those who apparently teach maths in my favourite classroom) and he told me "Piece of cake! You only have to use the p/q formula!"
Right! The p/q formula! Silly old me, why hadn't I thought of that myself??
He then noted down the p/q formula for me and I was succeeded easily to solve the task.

I think I could understand maths now. A circumstance which could have had a MAJOR impact on my future life had it occured 15 years ago.
So, about this maths Abitur thing ... could I do it again maybe?
Had I had a better understanding of maths back then, I would have had much better marks. Which means I would have been much more confident in my mathematical abilities. Which means I wouldn't have let my disbelieve in myself stand in the way of me applying for pilote training. Which means I might have become a pilote. Which means I would earn lots of money now, see a lot of the world (especially from above), have a fancy apartment and never even worry about such things as Tay B'oi.

But then again, I probably wouldn't know all of you guys, so screw that!