Not so good the music is

Note: This post is going to make hasty generalizations and will likely anger some dear friends.

This image shows up when you search 'crappy karneval music'

Karneval music in Germany.

It’s pretty bad.

It’s really bad.

I mean, I think… I’ve been trying to wrap my head around it the past couple weeks as Karneval repeatedly pounded down my mind’s door,  loosened my psychic defenses and embedded itself deep in my brain.

Carnival in Brazil has those samba lines. Trinidad & Tobago rolls to soca and calypso. New Orleans’ Mardi Gras has some great stuff.

But Karneval music in Germany… hrrrmmm

Karneval is coming

It happens soon. The Karneval city of Cologne is gearing up for their big celebration. Revelers are steeling their guts drinking a little more than usual each day. Merchants are loading in shipments of crappy fake fur costumes. The random ‘ra-ra’ music is flooding the airwaves.

It’s time to get yourself to the store and figure out what want to be.

Last year’s celebration included this and this.

Jelly Meat Dream World

It was on the menu of the day, Einbeinsülze mit Bratkartoffeln.

Now, I love me some Bratkartoffeln, but this Einbeinsülze, what, where, how? I turned to Johnna, trusted friend and arbiter of all things good here in Germany.

“Pig knuckle,” she surmised.

I put in my order expecting pig knuckle, something akin to what Steve here enjoyed.  I love taking chances on the unknown dish. But the plate that arrived quickly changed things.

My brother* is the world’s biggest fan of Better Home and Gardens’ Cookbooks from the late 60s when brilliant photography joined forces with adventurous typography and whimsical drawings to create something beyond cookbooks, more like works of art. We often tittered over the photos of ‘aspics,’ meat and vegetables encased in gelatin molds.

Who would eat this? Why would you do this? Can God exist in a world where this would be allowed?

Picnic table stage fright

This is what comes up as an image when you search scheiss Deutsch

I pulled up a seat at the Gut Ostler Farm Saturday Afternoon Open House in mid-October.

“Sprechen sie Deutsch?”

“Ja, ein bisschen,” I replied.

“Nein, Kyle sprichst gut Deutsch,” my friend interjected.

And then I froze.

As a person familiar with the stage and mostly comfortable in front of people, it was surprising how an intimate gathering of four around a picnic table could suddenly become the largest, most ominous audience in the world.

My throat tightened, my eyes searched for a way out and all looked at me expecting something to spring forth. And it didn’t.

I stuttered and stammered, and tried to remember how to say simple things. And eventually I excused myself to get some food.

My vocabulary continues to grow and my confidence has picked up a bit, but I am nowhere near to what I would call a good German. I’m not even sure if what I wrote up there is correct and I’m too lazy right now to go check, so please just apply a ‘(sp?)’ to it all.

I eventually returned to my table with a plate of meat.

When your language skills are right on the verge, you’re bound to occasionally end up with something you’re uncertain of (check out my next post for more on that). Being affirmative and smily can often carry you through to the the next contextual contact and may make the difference between interrupting the flow or finding a verbal lifesaver to pull you back into the conversation. Other times you end up with a large plate of gristly meat when you thought you’d be getting the potato salad platter with lamb shank.

My friends looked at my plate of meat and I proceeded to tear at it with razor-sharp incisors as if it’s exactly what I ordered. Fortunately, that gave me something keep my mouth busy until the conversation changed to a direction I could follow.

Lot of departures going round

I wrote about him before, but Andy Rooney has played a fairly important role in my life. I can remember back in high school when Brock Gourlie and I would compete to see who could check out “And more by Andy Rooney” the most. It was a good time and I fondly remember his sage response to the check out woman at the grocery store.

“Is that all you need?”

“Of course it’s all I need. If’ I’d wanted more, I would have put it there, bitch!”

I added the ‘bitch’ part because I thought it would make this post more entertaining. But that was the gist of a three-page story in this book and helps explain how I learned impatience and crotchetiness and how to be ornery.

It saddened me to see he will be retiring at 92 years of age. If you ever read this Andy, stop being such a lazy ass. Just kidding, I salute you and I’ll miss you dearly.

Here is a video you might enjoy.