In the event that I would be presumptuous enough to write an autobiography I would title it, with appropriate presumptuousness, "Walking in a Dream".

Lately I have been getting the feeling that this is precisely what I have been doing. Life this past month consisted of a stream of events that swept a complacent me away in the direction of the next day. A stream of readings about medieval society, summaries of said readings, lunches at the cafeteria with friends, more readings and summaries, some simple finite-state networks followed by a stream of movies and unpredictable weekends... oh, and of course a very consistent stream of rain water falling on the city throughout the month.

Out of this stream of events I was only able to fish out the following (mostly mundane) observations and memories:

- Cream cheese, a loaf of bread and fruit make for impressively simple and effective travel food. One needs no utensils to consume this food (unless you take a pineapple or a pomegranate as fruit), it is filling and relatively healthy.

- Book tickets a month in advance: early enough to be cheap, late enough to procrastinate with plans.

- Young couples on park alleys are much more dangerous to cyclists than cars. They have a tendency to try to take up the whole path just at the moment you are about to pass them. That alone, however, is not dangerous, just a nuisance. The problem arises when one rings one's bike's bell, thus shocking the love birds into reality and as a result causing them to dart in unpredictable directions in the most uncoordinated manner. Beware of couples in park alleys!

- Eat more. Getting blown off of a bike by the wind is becoming slightly embarrassing.

- If one falls off a bike, one should get up and look for one's glasses. Once they have been found, one can continue on his or her way.

- Sleeping 8 or 9 hours a day does not make one less sleepy. The more you have, the more you want.

- Some knowledge of music theory greatly helps when composing music.

- Bridges have a tendency to freeze over when the temperature drops below zero Celsius. Beware of bridges in winter.


It seems that this year Christmas will be white only online on most major websites. Talk about virtual reality replacing the real one!
I nonetheless wish everyone and anyone reading happy Holidays, whatever they may be. Considering that I am supposed to be on break from academics, I should be posting some more entries fairly soon, perhaps even still in the old year.

Vocab

This might come as a surprise to some people, but the actual purpose of my year abroad is to learn German. This purpose is somewhat hard to trace in this blog so far and I think that if one was to base one's opinion only on reading my entries, one might think all I ever do is wander around cities and towns, try food of varying quality and find ways to mess up the logistics of my travel with differing degrees of creativity and success.

Well, this entry is addressing this misconception and I hope it does so well.

Below is a list of words and expressions that I have learned (well enough to write them all down in a post). Please note that quite a few things in this list, especially expressions, are definitely slang. I am well aware of the limits of their acceptable usage, but nevertheless count them as valuable acquisitions that widen my knowledge of German as a whole.
All entries are given with an English translation on the right of and a note of acknowledgement below the German expression.

der innere Schweinehund -- inner lazy person.
Thank you Rosie.

Kein Thema! -- No problem! (also Kein Ding! Kein Problem! Kein Stress!... the germans must love this expression).
Thanks to my roommate, Claire.


der Kater -- along with the traditional meaning of "male (tom)cat", this word also means "hangover"
Thanks to my other roommate, Janis, for using an idiosyncratic version of the word (Katerchen, aka minor hangover) and thus introducing me to the more conventional version.

Chill, mal, Alter! -- Relax, man/dude/bro! (literal translation of Alter is more like "old man")
Thanks to the next door neighbors Tillman and Andre along with countless other people who use the word "Alter" every day.


Wie läuft's? -- yet another slang expression to ask how someone is doing.
Thanks to Lukas Kawerau for using it for the first time in front of me.


Haudegen, Lehen(swesen), Ross, Fahne, Festung -- All very useful and current vocab from my medieval history class (the geeks among you can plug these words into Leo and see what they mean).

genau die Geschichte -- precisely (more colloquial version of the ubiquitous "genau")
Thanks to an anonymous worker at the Rechnenzentrum


Maultaschen -- A local version of dumplings, with minced pork and spinach inside. They, along with pasta, potatoes, onions and cheap bread constitute most of my diet :)

P.S.
I will be editing this post and adding more stuff as the year progresses.