I know.  I’m as shocked as you are.  In case you were wondering, I’m on vacation until Tuesday.  This is far from the norm.  This post exists to get you all back up to speed on all the stray thoughts I’ve jotted down in my handy-dandy notebook that never warranted an entire post.  Hopefully, moving forward, I can be a little more consistent (don’t hold your breath for more than once a week), since I’m now aware people are reading this monstrosity.   Onwards!

• If invited to an “authentic Irish pub,” prepare for unrelentingly disappointing experience.  It’s exactly as German as everything else, just as few people speak English, and you’re paying a premium for Guinness and something potatoey.  It will also require you to take a train to another town.  Everything does.
• Speaking of the train, there are few things so disheartening as arriving early, buying a ticket at the automat, standing on the platform, watching the train approach from down the track, quietly patting yourself on the back for not messing anything up, and then watching the train fail to stop for you.  In that moment, your entire life becomes a sitcom and you look around for a camera to shrug at.  There is no camera.  Just the same ancient woman smoking a cigar that was there when you arrived.  Advice:  shuffle home sadly and try again tomorrow.
• Other modes of transportation:  walking.  Prepare yourself.  You WILL be hit by a bicycler, and they WILL blame you for it as they scream and ride past.  Resist the urge to show them everyone’s favorite finger, that will get you a fine here.  No joke.
• When your Scottish director offers to take you to the grocery store, accept the offer, but regret it immediately when you realize his car’s steering wheel is on the wrong side.  Enjoy peeing yourself as you feel almost flung into oncoming traffic at every narrow, cobblestoned turn.
• Toilets.  Good news:  everyone knows the word “toilet.”  Bad news:  They’re all strange.  They jut out of the wall and hang in space precariously.  Also, the flush button doesn’t so much flush as it does spray your entire ass with a frigid stream of water.  Prepare yourself for that uniquely horrible experience daily as you always seem to inadvertently lean back and hit the button.
• Light switches are massive.  A solid four square inches of light switch.  You know that “Oh no!  I can’t find the light switch in the dark” feeling?  Germans don’t.  The middle third of all walls is predominantly light switch.  Swat blindly, you’ll find it.
• Luckily, you really won’t need them all that much.  Your lights should be off at all times if you’re not actively defusing a bomb in the dim glow of the one lamp you’re allowed to have on at a time.
• My landlords make me open all the windows in my apartment once a day, every day.  They don’t speak English, but they keep saying something about getting air and CO2.  I honest to goodness am not sure what the deal is, but I haven’t suffocated yet.
• The best food I’ve eaten in Germany is Turkish.  Döner Kebabs are flatbread sandwiches stuffed with meat of questionable origin and enough sauce and vegetables to distract you from this fact.  It’s also the only thing open after about 9:30.  Magical, wonderful, but they may have also given me aggressive, third-world-country-style dysentery.
• Speaking of questionable meat, I don’t exactly know how high the standards are for meat packaging and sale are here.  Most meat (sausages notwithstanding) I’ve eaten tastes ever so slightly of prison ass.  Not to mention my dilemma of accidentally buying one package of ground beef and one of ground “meat.”  To the German who recently sent their dog to “a nice, big farm somewhere,” he made a passable foodstuff.
• They play Ke$ha on the radio here.  I love Ke$ha.  She brings out the disease-ridden party girl hidden deep inside me and I was glad for her unexpected company as I stared aimlessly at the alien symbols on all the food in the grocery store.  Did I dance?  A little.
• To any aspiring home builders or designers out there:  Haphazardly sticking a shower faucet into the wall above your bathtub spigot does not a shower make.  If at any time you find yourself thinking, “You know what I want to do while I’m washing myself?  Constantly worry about the direction I’m holding the shower nozzle I’m forced to keep in my hand the entire time.”  It’s not so much a means of hygienic maintenance as a clever way to flood your entire bathroom when your rice-paper shower curtain just fails to work.
• Baths are not fun for anyone over the height of about 5’6″
• Wedged between the Coke and Water in some vending machines (all that I’ve seen) is beer.  It’s cheaper than either of the options that are next to it.  Which is discomfiting.
• To all the people on the street who have seen me ambling about my apartment in various states of undress.  I’m sorry.  I keep forgetting about the giant windows in the living room I never use.  Stop peering into other people’s business and we won’t have this problem.
• Germans stare.  They’re not embarrassed about it, either.
• Are you a German woman over 40?  That’s not a question anyone ever has to ask.  It’s easy to tell by the unnatural shade of red they all seem to dye their hair.  It’s like the government is mailing out bottles of “red velvet trollop” to all the women on their 40th birthday.  My experience with the kafkaesque nightmare that is German bureaucracy wouldn’t necessarily make this a totally unbelievable scenario.
• To the restaurant “Sushi and Wine”:  I respect your honesty, but your name makes you sound less like a respectable place to eat and more like a money laundering front.
• McPaper?  It’s the name of a chain of businesses here.  I have no idea what they do, but I can only assume it’s an Irish news conglomerate of some kind.
• The trash/recycling/multiple choice test situation here is deeply confusing.  I’ve resolved myself to avoid it entirely by packaging my trash and mailing to Sean Penn.  I think it’s cheaper than the fine for getting the sorting wrong.

That’s just about all I have for now, but these stray thoughts tend to pile up every day.  It’s a very odd place, this Germany.  More next time on:  Some Guy’s Blog!

Hello again!  To the two of you still checking for the occasional update:  here’s an update!

Today, after over a month in country, I finally made it to the incredibly large city approximately twenty minutes from my flat.  Sometimes even the exciting victories come with sad realizations.  My days as “that American hermit” are steadily coming to an end.  More or less.  Maybe.  Probably not.  More to the point:  I come bearing pictures and tales from the city once affectionately called “a burning, charred, blackened rubble heap” by the American guys who carpet bombed the hell out of it.  Too soon?  Nah.

In case the title didn’t clue you in:  WELCOME TO DRESDEN

(More text below the pictures.  Click on them for enlargement/captions.)

This is the train stop in Radebeul (where I live). Graffiti is almost as common as bureaucracy around these parts, which is to say nigh omnipresent.

When you get off at the Hauptbahnhof (Central Station), you’re just a short jag from this long drag of shopping. However modern and sharp looking, it was a bit of a shock, considering I was looking for old world charm. Instead, I found shirts at a hefty discount, which allows yet another delay before I try to wrestle with the German washing machine in my basement.

That! Over there! Spires?!?! Old buildings? We’re getting closer to the golden land!

This is more like it!

Those statues were saved from the city following the firebombing (Slaughterhouse 5 for further reading on the matter). They were oddly captivating. What you can’t see is the McDonalds immediately out of the frame stage right.

Finally! That’s it! The building I’ve been looking for. Here it is as seen through the pretentious arthouse lens. “See how the old world stands behind the maze of progress, yada, yada, yada.” It’s a neat picture, deal with it.

This is the Frauenkirche (Church of our Lady). Prior to the destruction of Dresden, it was widely regarded as one of the most beautiful churches in all of Europe. Then we blew it up. Whoops. However, industrious people that they are, the Germans collected the rubble and used it to painstakingly recreate the building in all its glory.

My man Martin Luther, the founder of my feast and the reason I find myself here on the other side of the world.

Can’t tell you what this building is. You come up with captions for 30-odd pictures.

This is a mural (again painstakingly re-crafted after destruction) showing all the electors and rulers of Saxony. It stretches on for the length of at least fourteen Turkish vendors all selling trinkets to Italian tourists.

This building, for whatever odd reason, really “spoke” to me, if you’ll forgive the further pretentiousness. It was my Polaris in terms of navigation. That spire led me back and forth across Dresden. Thank you, building.

Doors, but oh what doors they were. The level of detail involved in the architecture here is something to behold.

This is the view from the top of the stairs leading to the “balcony of Europe.” The trees were a bit of a shock after climbing the stairs from a cobblestoned city of towers and high walls.

This and the next few images are taken from the “Balcony of Europe” that looks out across the Elbe river. That bridge connects the “Altstadt” (where this and preceding pictures were taken) to the “Neustadt” (which is, coincidentally, the oldest part of the city, as well as its new hipster hideaway).

The Elbe is remarkable to behold. All great cities need a water feature.

Another view of my lovely building before heading to the Neustadt.

Since this is a theatrical pilgrimage I’m on, here’s “A View from the Bridge.” Eat your heart out, Arthur Miller.

More bridgey goodness.

We’ve broken on through to the other side. After hearing such rave reviews of the Neustadt from my castmates, I was a little underwhelmed. It’s predominantly repurposed Eastern Bloc style architecture and hipsters. It’s like Portland as designed by Uncle Joe Stalin.

However, it was a great pleasure to see this sex bomb on my journey. I’ll actually be around to see him, if I so choose. It’s a tough call.

This was, by far, the most impressive part of the Neustadt, but that’s just, like, my opinion, man.

August the Second, Elector of Saxony. Sounds impressive, looks impressive.

The last picture of my glorious building on my return from the Neustadt.

More Elbe shots as I prepare to hike back to the Hauptbahnhof.

That’s the view of the “Balcony of Europe” when returning from the Neustadt.

The horses pulling the carriage you see stage left there are lovely creatures, not at all bothered by the droves of tourists who seem to have never seen a horse before.

Home again! “But that’s a theatre, Austin.” Yes, but not only do I sleep in a flat behind it, I spend more than enough time there to consider it my true German residence. It’s a huge complex. Got to love those State subsidized arts, huh?

How about all that, huh? Now for the observations for all you still around and reading:

• I didn’t actually go inside anything except a clothing store today.  Museum day(s) will have to be better planned than “Hey, think I’m going to get on a train today.”
• Speaking of said clothing, I’ve gone native.  Expect me to be adorned in true euro-trash fashion as the warmer months approach.  I didn’t bring anything breezy enough with me for Springtime (“…for Hitler and Germany”).
• Apologies to the collective karmic forces for the end of that last point up there, I don’t get to make as many tasteless jokes here.  Damned language barrier.
• To the woman I witnessed holding her four-to-six year old daughter’s bare ass over the street so she could pee:  Who hurt you and why are you like this?
• The experience of eating a bratwurst and having a beer in the shadow of a rebuilt ancient church is something wonderful and difficult to describe.  Scratch that.  A culture that’s open to having a beer on the street with lunch is something wonderful and difficult to describe.  Luther would approve.
• To the beret-wearing man on the bike with the oversized Soviet flag billowing in the breeze behind him:  I feel your message is lost when you’re handing out flyers in the midst of a rather busy outdoor mall.  Woo!  Capitalism.
• “Would you like to pay fifteen cents for a shopping bag to carry your purchase?”  No, I’d like to carry each individual item in a precariously balanced heap on the train ride home.  Take your blood money, German retailer.
• To the hipster douche on the bike who hit the curb and launched themself into the plate glass window:  I think I pulled something laughing at you.  Thank you.
• Tom Jones’ “Sex Bomb” is a song you should all experience if you haven’t.  It makes my reference in the caption less of an odd, homoerotic sentiment.
• Germans seem to really be into creating gaping holes into the Earth.  There’s currently one in the street in front of my house that’s alternately occupied by work crews or a discomfiting number of pigeons, and there were at least four in various parts of Dresden today.
• To the suicidal pigeon who leapt in front of my train home:  I’m sorry life had you so down.  May bird heaven be a better fit for you.

I suppose that ought to do it for now.  God only knows when I’ll be back to post again.  Sometime soon, I guess.  Until we meet again.

(Edited because my grammar is lazy and my mom can still fix it, even when half a world away.  Gracias, Madre)

Remember when I said there’d be more posts with more frequency?

I lied!

All the same:  I’m back.

And you may be wondering to where it is I disappeared.  You may be thinking I have so many interesting stories about what it is I’ve been doing and all the excellent pictures I’ll have to show you and yada, yada, yada, etc.

Fact of the matter is that there’s really not that much excitement.  The absence of communication is borne entirely of the absence of anything to tell you all about.  As I’ve said before, suburbs are suburbs all over.  They roll up the sidewalks and turn off all the street lamps after sunset, it seems.  I digress.

More to the point:  I’m still kicking.  I’ve found that my life here in my own little hermitage has become pleasant enough.  Work, work, sleep, work.  It’s a steady rhythm to existence.  I’ve found a good enough number of people who speak English.  The interesting thing about living in a different country is that it’s just like living in yours, except now I need subtitles.  There’s little time for being a tourist.  I recommend travel for the perpetually unbusy or the independently wealthy.  Otherwise, you’ll have to content yourself with a beer or two at a work function and the pleasure of a quiet evening with English language Netflix.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

I don’t want any of this to come off as a complaint.  I consider this to be a great adventure in my life; the greatest to this point, by far.  Hell, if only because I’m forced to be somewhat of an adult it becomes the largest change in my relatively short life.  There’s time yet and a great many things left to do.

The third verse of Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al” comes to mind.

I believe that’ll do it for now.  To all of you in the States:  enjoy the rest of your Green Beer and I’ll catch you at some indiscriminate point in the future.

It’s been a week, and in lieu of anything substantial due to my moving to a new apartment today, here are some stray thoughts about my earliest forays into Germany.

• No one back home finds my Stones reference with the whole “Exile on Meißner Street” thing to be nearly as cool as I do.  Screw you guys, it’s clever.
• To say another thing about the Stones:  Classic Rock in the English language sounds something like sweet love in your ears when all you hear anywhere else is the strangle garble of long-“u” sounds and consonants that make up the tongue of the Fatherland.
• Time in a foreign country causes you to have romantic thoughts about parts of your homeland that you really never experienced (e.g., the odd expanse of the American Left Coast).
• Saxony (where I am) is not to be confused with the Germany you might have in your head.  There’s no lederhosen, I haven’t seen a single pretzel, and I have been privy to no weird sex stuff.  I can’t decide if I’m relieved or disappointed.
• There is a preconceived notion that Germans have no sense of humor.  I have found this to be incorrect.  They do, indeed, have a sense of humor, but allow me to say it is not now and will never be YOUR sense of humor.  The laughter will always have nothing to do with you.  Accept it.
• Lights flicker here.  Prepare for the use of a light switch to turn your late-night bathroom visit into an episode of the X-Files.  Luckily, I have not been attacked by a giant fluke-worm monster as of yet.  Knocking on wood as I type.
• Coke Zero tastes almost identical to American regular Coke.  Why American Coke Zero does not, I can’t say.  I can only assume it has something to do with background Chernobyl radiation in the artificial sweetener here, and that a pernicious illness is on the horizon.
• Something about the way I move and exist, even when dead silent, “screams American,” so I hear.  I have no inclination as to what that might be, but I’m open to suggestions.  To my knowledge, I wasn’t wearing my “Two Time World War Champ” t-shirt.
• Speaking of which, I can see Anne-Frank-Street from my window.  I somehow find this strange, but can’t really figure out why.
• Germans have a thing for Westerns.  Who knew?
• Suburbs in Germany are much like Suburbs in the US.  A not much going on besides a proliferation of middle-aged white men in ever-so-slightly-too-small clothing .  I have yet to make my pilgrimage into Dresden proper.
• Booze is cheap; live it up.
• The heat settings on the shower have a certain temperature marked as “comfort.”  I can’t necessarily pinpoint why, but I feel the heavy weight of judgement as I push the thermostat up to the “burn off the top three layers of skin” setting.
• Entschuldigung is a very long way to say “excuse me” and does not roll off the tongue easily when you bump into someone.

For now, this will do.  Pictures are forthcoming and expect more closely spaced, but erratic, posting in the future seeing as my wireless connection will be a bit more reliable.

To all of you back in the States, I wish you well from six hours into the future on this rainy Radebeul day.  Bis Später!

Hello!

No…that’s no good.

Guten Tag!

Nope….worse.

Welcome?

That’ll do.

This is a travel blog.  Pretentious?  Yes.  Very much so.  It doesn’t change the fact that this is how people share the things they’re doing.  Thus:  blog.

None of this actually matters.  The point here is, in case you hadn’t heard, I’m going to Germany.  Dresden, more specifically.  Small suburb thereof called Radebeul is where I’ll be living.  Why?  Well, turns out there’s something to this theatre racket.  Through the gracious benefaction of Piedmont Players Theatre and Reid Leonard, I’m going to be working with the Landesbühnen Sachsen on their production of “In God’s Own Country,” which is a new play written about Colonial Lutheranism.  Sounds pretty exciting, huh?  Protestant Reformation, old white dudes, Germans…yeah.

Now that you’re aware what’s going on, we can get to the crux of the matter.  Yes, I’m incredibly excited about my stay and the work I’ll be doing, but there’s not much to be said about the ins and outs of a theatrical experience abroad.  The purpose of this blog is not to bore you with that, it’s to keep you all on the up and up about what it’s like to an American abroad in the 21st Century.  Lofty?  Yes.  Still pretentious?  Maybe even more so.

There have been volumes and volumes written about the American abroad in the century prior.  My great love of Ernest Hemingway (after this point referred to in this blog as “Ernesto”) is proof enough of that.  That was then, however.  The Lost Generation had reason to be lost.  They were adrift in a world beset by woe and war.

I am not.

I’m a college student of no real renown.  I went to Denver once.  That’s about it.  There is no looming existential dread.  I am simply a man…no…a guy that’s getting on a plane to live somewhere alien and new.  For further study on this issue, I offer up the movie ‘Lost in Translation’ starring the always-wonderful Bill Murray or the episode ‘Fish Out of Water’ from the Netflix series Bojack Horseman, starring an alcoholic horse.

Still you might ask:  “Why blog?”

To which I say:  “You ask too many questions.”

Really however, the answer is:  “Why not?”  The great virtual sounding board of the internet will be here while I put to electronic paper the impressions of four-or-five months somewhere else.  Stay tuned for sporadic updates with pictures, stories, rants, and (hopefully) bouts of things actually worth reading.

And now?  Back to staring at an empty airport gate and wondering why in the hell I got here so early.