What the fuck is going to happen to all of us??

Yeah, so I just heard about the whole financial bailout being voted down (god bless america), and the subsequent stock market crash (which is not good for this temporary ease in the $ to € exchange rate). So if any of you read my note on facebook about the alien invasion, it must have been a kind of premonition or something. I'm just glad I have you, dear internet to keep me company in these dark times ahead.

But I'm not really down about the economy- I've been bracing myself for a diet of flavourless noodles and müslix for almost two weeks now.. I'm easing into it you might say. I'm just bored- or at least afraid of an impending boredom that may or may not arrive. The charm of the whole exchange experience is beginning to wear thin- and the BFFs bullshit that is mistaken for the almost-acquaintedness of all of us involved- though endearing and sometimes comforting- is not much of a crutch if you don't have good friends to talk to. I guess I am somewhat lucky to have some close friends, but I suppose I am also saying that I have started to really miss my friends (and select members of my family) and when I might have said that I'd never get homesick here, I was just being naïve.

Booooorrrringggg!!

Entshuldigen. I've been having Schlafstundes lately during the day and its fucking up my sleeping- so here I am late at night with nothing better to do than make frivolous blog posts. I don't even really have any good internet fodder to offer cz all I ever do is read the online version of the NYtimes and listen to CSPAN on iTunes. I don't know... I have this urge to take a long hot bath (no can do) or watch movies all day in bed (no tv, no vcr, no university library card to take out movies) or make mixed drinks with robutussin and hang out on the balcony in the sun listening to Kaki King.

Oh yeah, that's what I was going to post about: I'm not sure whether or not this is like, a guilty pleasure or not (what is there that I can't find some reason to feel guilty about?) but I think I like Kaki King. It may be her handsome, boyish features or that slow, jammy noodling that reminds me of a time when I had easier access to drugs, but I think I could watch her hang out in a basement with a drum kit, a guitar (or lapsteel) and a bank of pedals just making music all day long. The problem is that I imagine meeting a really annoying hippy chick who I have nothing in common with and am hating talking to, but for some reason or another we get on the topic of Kaki King and I just can't bring myself to lie and say I don't like her music. And then I'm stuck there with this stupid chick having to listen to her inane blathering about why we both like Kaki King. Bitch, just shutup! I don't want to come over and watch lofi acoustic versions on youtube, I didn't even want to admit liking her to someone I hardly know so just go away already and stop ruining it for me! Thanks to you I probably won't even like her by the time I write my next post! Fuckk.

brand consciousness

I keep taking pics of german brands I think are funny at the time- like Ice-T (iced tea) or 'dick n' durstig' paper towels..














but then I remember that this is just a kind of mild culture shock and things back home are also totally whack:










why do all those homophobe juggalos drink that shit anyways? How does that even make sense?

ich bin krank

yeah, so I got sick with a bitty little cold virus, and I've been catching up on the campaign, putting off registering to vote in my home country and finding out my birth name if I were Sarah Palin's child. ('Knife Pile')

I am also sick of feeling pressured to write all about Germany. Not that I blame you, dear reader, but sometimes blogging can challenge the most interesting of experiences with finding something worthwhile to share.

So fuck it... for awhile. I'm gonna stay in bed and have an internet smorgasbord:

Ok impossible conundrum #1:

Which would you rather be stuck in the middle of- an actual hippy party (like some kind of festival or organic pot-luck), or a "Hippy Party" (like, 'dress-up-like-a-hippy-themed')? Impossible to answer.














Top image search results for 'worst party ever':






StadtKind - killer deffos [zshare]

Walter Meego - Forever (Van She remix) [discodust]

few more pics...

some of these are a little older but worthwhile, and only three of them are in a particular order (can you guess?)

Fishwich mania

This is not my official food post, but I wanted to post this pic of the fishwich place we keep eating at because we are addicted to it:

It's called 'Nordsee' and you can get amazing fish baguettes, smoked salmon wraps and herring sandwiches for pretty cheap- especially for being in the Altstadt (old city- the touristy area near all the boutiques and sights). Yeah so, for all you fashion freaks I am like a ten minute walk from countless boutiques like Lacoste, DnG, and places that showcase Gucci and Armani and what-have-you. Not that its really my thing, but it's neat to pass by all these windows in the morning if I go to catch the bus up at the Bahnhof.

Also, we've been eating a shitload of really good donär, which is a little pricey near the Altstadt, but outside town you can get a real good one in fresh-baked focaccia for 3€. Usually I'm too famished to remember, but I will take pictures of the next one.

Yesterday we bought a bottle of 2.49€ champagne and some bottles of orange juice and drank mimosas on the curb outside the mall. I'm not sure what you call the median between trashy and decadent, but Roy said he felt like we were royalty in exile. He also almost broke through the windows of the H&M when the plastic cork went off like a cannon right out front of the mall entrance.

It was cool and rainy today, but we still needed to get out so we went and hung out in Altstadt. People are so fucking rude sometimes, they will be walking along, totally not looking where they are going, and then they get close to you and say 'entschuldigen' like somehow you were supposed to get out of their way. So today we started being real cocky (after some street-jäger) and saying 'entschuldigen' to all sorts of dazed out old german tourist people as we passed. Sometimes you have to make your own fun. Also- Camel 'Essential Flavor' cigarettes- amaye-zing. Finally I found a pack of smokes that lives up to my fantasies of what I wanted european cigarettes to be. Soooo good. But will have to rotate between them and maybe Davidoffs cz they are 20 cents more. 

Ok so, here are some random pics also- Roy and Yael not taking pictures of the historic monuments, cool font from fashion store, "Free Willy jeanswear", my friend Tal and american friend Jordan from Long Island after drinking at the beach bar on the banks of the Rhine near my building (Tal cut off all his hair and is going for the 'Jewish Skinhead' look), Eis (creme), and some dude from a zombie biker gang.

a few more pics...

(Sorry about the weird composition.. will figure this out sooner or later. Just click on any of the pics that are hidden to see them)

A couple shots from the Biergarten:














Some dude named Ferdinand holding his scroll:



The main pavilion in the Uni, and one of the weird pomo art installations that help you not to get lost, (Uni Konstanz is like a pomo architecture disaster- I suppose in the best possible sense cz its pretty cool but y'know.. I'll post more pics so you see what I mean):

My first looks at the Bodensee (AKA Lake Constance), and me on the third day of doing two to three hours of bureaucratic paperwork all afternoon..




Also, on an unrelated note: we found a brand of beer that sells for 29 euro cents a bottle, but my friends and I (mennonites and jews are so much alike) thought that with a 20-25 euro cent deposit on the bottle, could that mean that these beers are only 4-9 cents apiece?

(My morning coffee)

Okay okay, so it's been long time no post I know, and I'm sorry if you were wondering if I ever even made it to Konstanz, and instead ended up riding trains with a bunch of hairless moravian gigilos- but no, I am here in Konstanz, and I have so much to post about it makes me want to shit. But after a glorious outing to the beach today, cut short by a bit of rain, I now have some eben-time to sit here and tell you many little tidbits.

Firstly, I am going to skip out on telling you about Austria because, while it was beautiful and very 'sound of music' everywhere, it is too boring to tell about, and really I need to catch this blog up to date.

So... I am having sooo much fun here. It is almost cliché to talk about how cool it is to be in a group of a hundred or so students from all over the world, but a couple anecdotes might help illustrate just how cool it is.

1) I have made close friends with three Israelis from Tel Aviv who are really smart and hilarious and make holocaust jokes every five seconds, especially when we are waiting in line or near a train station. We are pretty much inseparable, and they are teaching me some Hebrew code-words so we can make fun of other people without them knowing.

2) At a party last night in my building and at one point was in the middle of a conversation between my friend Yael, a really funny Kurdish guy from Iraq and (to a lesser extent but I will include him because he was standing nearby and trying to say intelligent things every once and awhile) an American who had made tours of both Iraq and Afghanistan, and all of us discussing the im/possibility of conflict resolution in their respective regions. Also met my very first Uzbeki- nice guy. Also talked RnB and soul music with Pierre from Paris.

3) When a turk winks at you, it means 'hi, friend'- not 'I want to fuck you'

4) Most turkish words are onomatapaeic- Roy is teaching me some. ('Chak-mak' is a lighter, because the flint goes "chak chak chak"

5) Taking a shit in the bathroom stall at school the other day reading the graffitti, and saw the passage/poem from the Lord of the Rings, (you know, 'Three rings for the Elven kings.. etc.') written out in full, five times in five languages, buy five different people (cz the handwritings were all different).

So those are just a few things I can remember off the top of my head right now, (party was just last night, not quite at the top of my game here) but I'm sure there will be more.

I want to do a post next on like, "Ten things you probably don't know about Konstanz" or germany- but something like that anyways, but I'll have to save up some good tidbits. Also expect periodic posts on really great words and phrases from foreign languages, (Roy tells me it is common in Hebrew to threaten to take a shit in someone's mouth, as in: "Mother, if you don't stop your haranguing I am going to shit in your mouth!")

Ok- one more little thing: Met up with a Slovenian dude waiting for the bus the other day, who introduced me to this other, (really cute) Slovenian girl. I told him I really like to read a famous Slovenian author named Slavoj Žižek, but he said he had never heard of him, so he asked the girl. She said she didn't really know a lot about him either, but that she knew he was a famous, brilliant author because he sat next to her on a train once, talked to her for two full hours and gave her an article written about him from a stack he was carrying along with him. Can u baleedat? Hi-larious.

Ok so, I will also take more pictures of my flat, my uni and my hood. And I will get more party pictures with my new friends so you can all be jealous.

Tschüssie!