I've been herded

I just got back from shopping at Ikea. Need I say more?

I was trying to figure out why there was no Monday night soccer game this week. There usually is, and it's usually a 2nd division game, so for me it's worth watching just to see who Alemannia might have to play against in the near future. Then I figured it out. This week is the 2nd round of the German Cup games. You know? That funny tournament that gets played every year between teams of wildly different levels?

In the second round at least 3 of the top level teams are going home, because 6 of those teams are playing against each other. Most of the rest of the games are inter-division games and those will be the fun games to watch. Everybody loves it when a low level team wins a couple of games, and makes the better teams look foolish. Who doesn't love an underdog.

This year VfB Lübeck and Eintracht Trier will get a chance to make someone look silly. These two teams are not in the top two divisions, so a win and a chance to play in the third round would be a huge achievement for either of them.

As for Alemannia, they are playing first division team Eintracht Frankfurt and the only thing we have going for us is a bit of momentum from last Sundays game. Both teams have a lot of injuries already, really early in the season, but Alemannia has been distracted with a coaching change and while they have hired a new coach, he only started work today. The game is tomorrow.

Update: Tuesday nights games only had 2 suprises, but I enjoyed both of them. Second division team Duisburg beat Borussia Monchengladbach, and that is a good thing. The former Alemannia coach Micheal Frontzeck is now coaching at M'gladbach. That's the guy who bravely lead Alemannia back to the second division a few years ago, from the first division. Bravely? The guy cleaned out his locker even before the last game was played, so that he didn't have to show his face in town again.

The really fun news came from the Trier - Bielfeld game, because 4 division team Trier did it again. They knocked another much higher level team from the Cup, and now get to played in the third round. Remember, these guys all have day jobs. They're not professional players by any stretch of the imagination. It seems like every year at least one small town team gets to play giant killer in this tournament. That's why it's so much fun to watch.

Anyway, Alemannia plays tonight and I'm going to the pub to watch.

Wiedergutmachen

The German language has a lot of compound words that would normally take a sentence or two of English to describe. Wiedergutmachen would be one of those words. You might notice that this particular compound word obeys the English language spelling "I before E" rule, but let me tell you, "I before E" is not always the case in German. This word is pronounced, "vee-der-GUT-machen", and it means to make up on a promise, or to make better where you might have failed before.

One word in German, a sentence in English.

These compound words are a part of why the German language works, and why it's often easier to speak in German than in English. Even my English speaking friends agree, and they will give me many more examples in the future.

Things I learned (again) from flying...

1. The first seat in a section, or an exit row seat is not always worth asking for even if you get a lot of extra legroom. You will also be close to the kitchen area, or toilet block and those things don't always smell good on airplanes.

Also, parents with small children are invariably at the front of a section because the airlines have a cleverly designed bassinet that hangs from hooks on that forward bulkhead. I'm not quite sure why they can't just hang those small children from those hooks, but they can't.

2. When arriving late for a connecting flight your airline will usually and quite graciously offer meal and hotel room vouchers, and if they don't offer immediately you just have to ask. The hotel however may not necessarily honor those vouchers, as was the case in my recent unexpected stopover in Calgary.

I checked in to the Calgary Delta Airport Hotel in the early afternoon, with a new ticket and boarding pass for the next morning. The voucher also clearly stated I could expect 3 meals, but this didn't stop Delta from disallowing my breakfast the next morning, because apparently my voucher was dated for the previous day.

How am I expected to eat breakfast the day before, when I checked in, in the mid-afternoon? Which airline breaks guitars? Delta? It wouldn't surprise me.

3. It is worthwhile to get a few samples from a parfumerie before any flight. I advise you to spray liberally around your nose and mouth in order to mask foul smells. By the end of a flight a commercial airplane is nothing more than a flying aluminum tube full of other peoples farts. Please see point number 1 for more thoughts on this matter.

4. Ear Plugs are a godsend on long flights. I recommend Doc's Proplugs, originally designed for scuba divers, but also useful for frequent fliers. I was a diver long before I was a frequent flier.

5. Last but not least, loosen up your shoes shortly after takeoff. I don't recommend to take them off because you'll want to wear them while moving around the cabin, which you should also do at least a couple of times in a long flight.

I hope that helps.

Quirky, but damned funny!

I have a lot of time on my hands these days and fortunately for me Al Gore invented the world's greatest time waster, otherwise known as the Internet. There are lots of bad things that can be said about the Internet, including the addiction factor, but there is plenty of great stuff too.

A lot of really creative people now have a place to show off their ideas and skills and while some of these people might be a little bit off the wall, some of these people are screaming funny too. The cartoonists in particular get to show off a lot of ideas that would never be picked up by a newspaper, never mind get syndicated.

I recently ran across Mike from See Mike Draw. His stuff is still simple, with Charlie Brown style round heads and he tries to avoid drawing hands. Can you tell that I used to own a comic book store? The screaming funny stuff isn't his graphic talent though, it's his ideas that stick out. He can take every day stuff and add a dimension to it that most people would never think of. Maybe it's because he is Australian?

Here is my favorite of his comics, reproduced with his permission of course. It's all about lego figures gone bad.


If you want to see more of his work check out See Mike Draw, URF, or Pencils at Dawn. He's not as active as many people would like, but hey, he probably has a real life too.

It's about time

It took Alemannia until the 4th game of the season to win a game, and the game was at least fun to watch. The two away games so far were both tied games, and the first home game was a five to nothing disaster against FC St. Pauli. It was more of a disaster because that was the first game ever held in the new Tivoli stadium.

You want to add insult to injury? Most of those 5 goals were scored by players who used to play for Alemannia.

In all the games so far the mid-field and attackers have have shown some impressive skills, they just haven't been able to put the ball in the net. The finally did that today. The defenders on the other hand have been slow to deal with opposition attacks. They're just not fast enough to cover a long pass, and that has cost them several times. Even in today's game goal keeper Thorsten Stuckmann was caught out of position a couple of times and he was only able to make the save because he's damned near 2 meters tall.

Anyway, that new stadium looks great. I drive past it almost every day that I go to the gym. The whole complex is not yet complete. The club is planning a youth training center and a business center too. But the stadium is open and available for use, there is plenty of parking and I have no doubt it will be used for any number of things. It would be a great concert venue. Capacity is 32,900 which includes standing only areas. For games that require seating only, capacity is 25,587. That meets the requirements for international matches, so someone has been planning ahead.



The next game is in two weeks time because the National Teams will be playing qualifying matches for the 2010 World Cup. Alemannia doesn't seem to have any test matches lined up, and that is a little wierd.

Angioedema

I've just discovered that this awful sounding diagnosis is far worse than it first appears. On Thursday last week I started to get a bit of a sore throat. No big deal, it happens. By Friday it was worse and by Friday night it was like, "what do we have around here, for this?".

It turned out we had no antibiotics so my wife wrote me a prescription for that and some throat lozenges with an anasthetic. Between those and some sudafed I was able to sleep at least, but I did wake up twice choking to death on my spit. It's damned scary waking up in the middle of the night, not able to breathe. At one point I had to stick fingers down my throat to clear the mucus. Gross, I know, but it worked

By Saturday night it was clear that Ampicillin was not the right antibiotic for this infection so I made a last minute dash to the pharmacist and she suggested another throat lozenge with a different antibiotic, Tyrothricin. I've never heard of it, but for 5 euros per package what the hell, I'll try it.

By Sunday morning I was still choking half to death on my own spit every time I tried to lay down, I couldn't breathe well and it was hard to eat anything more than yoghurt. The muscle groups in my upper body were sore from cramps, from every time I was vomiting or close to it. On top of all that, a migraine was building up. My wife decided that this was getting serious, so she pulled out her old school books to find a dosage of cortisone and any other possible antibiotic.

She settled on Doxycyclin and 15mg Prednisolon for a first dosage on Sunday night. We had to find the designated late night pharmacy to get those. As of now on Monday morning I've got a full dosage of three different antibiotics, cortisone, IV Aspirin, and some yoghurt, all for my breakfast.

I feel like shit and I probably have the most expensive urine in the world. It smells awful. I'm tired too, but I don't want to lay down just so that I can choke on my spit again. Fortunately all this medication will be covered by my health insurance coverage, so that paid for itself this month.

A new season

The German soccer season starts every year with round one of the DFB Pokal, or German Cup Tournament. All of the top-flight teams are automatically entered for the 64 team tournament but that only fills 34 of the 64 places. The rest of the places are distributed in a complicated system that could only have been developed by a German.

Who actually plays whom is done by lottery and that brings up the possibility that very low level teams can wind up playing some of the best teams in Europe. The first round is usually played at the home stadium of the lower level team and that insures some revenue for that team, both from ticket sales and television. The fun part about this tournament is that sometimes the lower level teams win! And somebody has to go home in shame.

This year one team from the second division and two teams from the first division were tossed out in the first round of the tournament. Kickers Offenbach beat their cross town rivals Eintracht Frankfurt by 3 goals to none. This is a classic rivalry. Offenbach is exactly the next exit on the autobahn from Frankfurt, but the teams don't actually meet very often these days. Offenbach is stuck in the 3rd divsion, while Frankfurt is stuck in the 2nd division.

VfB Lübeck from the 4th division played and beat FSV Mainz 05, which is quite the achievement considering that Lübeck filed for bankruptcy last year. Mainz only just got promoted back to the 1st division this year, so losing in the first round of the Cup tournament is a bit of cold water at the start of their season.

Hannover 96 was beaten by Eintracht Trier, another shameful result for a 1st division team. Trier plays in, ahem, the 5th division. The Trier players are all amateurs. They have day jobs and play for fun. In a bit of schadenfreude, it's also fun to note that the current managers and coaches for Hannover are almost all former Alemannia employees. Let these losers work somewhere else!

These three winning teams will get to play in the 2nd round of the tournament and the biggest benefit to them is a 2nd round of television revenue. Some of those amateur teams only have local businesses as sponsors to help pay for their uniforms, and their local community maintains the stadium. For them the television revenue is a big boost to their sporting club.

The coaches on these smaller, local teams are usually pretty pragmatic about their chances in the Cup tournament. They usually have their players try to play an extremely defensive game in hopes of winning a moral victory. That means keeping the score to 0:0 for as long as possible. This years winner of the moral victory is Wormatia Worms. Worms is a 3rd division team with a long history of financial problems, but they held on against Greuther Fürth (2nd division) until the 118th minute of the game. That's double overtime, on a long hot day. If they had held on just 2 minutes longer the game would have gone to penalty shots.

As for Alemannia they played an absolute nobody team from the east of Germany, Torgelower SV Greif. When that name came up in the lottery everyone was scratching their heads, saying "Who"? Alemannia won the game 4:1 but that one goal against got the most furious response I've ever seen from coach Jurgen Seeburger. I thought his bald head was going to explode. The defensive player whose mistakes resulted in that goal was replaced in the first half and sent to the showers. A coach only gets 3 replacements in a game and to use one in the first half is rare, except for injuries. Obviously Seeburger was not amused.

The first game of regular league play is on Friday against Karlsruher SC, and it's an away game because the new Tivoli stadium is not quite ready for play. The club actually made an application to the league for an away game for their first game just in case this happened. My wife has the night shift on Friday night, so I'll be going to the pub to watch the game.


Update: Tonights Monday night game was the last of the first round games for the German Cup, between Fortuna Dusseldorf and the Hamburg Sport Verein. Fortuna was promoted to the 2nd division for this season and HSV has the distinction of being the only team in the German 1st division that has never been demoted.

Tonights game was a lot more exciting than I thought it would be, as the score went back and forth for the whole game. Fortuna tied the game at 3:3 with only seconds to go in the second over time period, forcing HSV into penalty shots. HSV won in the end, but the moral victory was with Fortuna. Nobody could have asked them for more. That last second goal is the sort of thing that keeps fans watching.

No, not the Veterinarian

I put some old people to sleep last weekend. No, I didn't take them to the veterinarian, but in the case of my mother-in-law I'm sometimes tempted. No, basically I just fed them and for some people that's all it takes.

My wife's parents have some friends that they've known pretty much since they moved to Germany over 50 years ago. They have a daughter who is my wife's age and those two grew up together, went to school together, etc, etc. They used to all get together at least once per year for a small garden party but they stopped doing that about 5 years ago when most of them gave up driving. Yeah, they're that old.

My wife was recently in touch with her old friend for some unrelated things and they hatched this plan to do another garden party. My in-laws are in their late 80's, and the parents of my wife's friend are in their 90's. They might not get another chance to do this.

My mother-in-law had all sorts of objections but that's normal for her. Like I said, sometimes I'm tempted. We sorted her out because she wouldn't have to cook or clean anything. I cooked and my wife and her friend took care of everything else. I've actually been going out to my in-laws place to help them with their shopping and cleaning and cooking about once per week lately, so this wasn't hard for me.

It was interesting to hear some of their old family stories, and they all wanted to meet me of course. My wife's friend told me afterward that her parents weren't sure if they wanted to meet a "chronically unemployed foreigner who had moved in with the daughter of old friends". Sounds bad when you put that way.

Anyway, I was my charming best and now they're sure that I'm "good enough" for their friends daughter. "He makes a good potato salad too", was the other comment.

Well, if that's all it takes?

Singapore Revisited

Did I ever mention that I like Singapore? Oh yeah, I did. Well, I still do. We stopped in on the way home from the dive trip in the Philippines. It is like a breath of fresh air to be back in an organized, clean and green modern city, after being an impoverished backwater like Mindoro.

We didn't do much of the cultural stuff like we did in the last couple of trips. Mostly we just shopped and took in a couple of movies. Star Trek, and Wolverine Origins actually. It's a treat for me because they are shown in the original English and it's not very often I get that. Actually, on the flights to and from Singapore I watched the last two Bond movies as well, again in English.

Otherwise we just did some shopping. I've got a new pair of shoes for the gym and my wife bought her favorite perfume because it was quite a bit cheaper there. I picked up a couple electronic bits and pieces and a copy of the Civilization IV game with all the expansion packs. I couldn't get that in English around here either.

The food was just as good as ever and if you're going to Singapore try No. 52 Boat Quay. I couldn't tell you the name of the place because it was in Chinese script. The food they serve is authentic and hot as hell Chinese. We ordered several dishes just to try a variety and even with numerous cold Tiger beers our bill only came to 70 Sing dollars, about 35 Euros.

We often had our breakfast at the food courts that seem to be on every block. Again we could sample several dishes for very little money. Lastly, I've gotten a new appreciation for McDonalds. No, you don't eat in McDonalds in Singapore. It just seems to be one of the few places where I could find a really good cup of coffee for a reasonable price. My wife and I both need our coffee in the morning.

New Astronauts

I mentioned a while ago that my wife was asked by the European Space Agency to be their consultant for gynecological matters with their new recruits. The agency didn't get near as many applications from women as they would have liked, and very few of those got past the aptitude tests or the general physical conditioning tests. That didn't leave very much for my wife to do. In fact, only 3 candidates made it to the stage where the medical evaluations were done.

Of those three only one made the final grade, and it just happens that she was my wife's favorite of the three. Along with a few others Samantha Cristoforetti is now an astronaut in training with ESA, and have a look at her wikipedia page. It's not a wonder she was selected. It looks likes she planned her entire life around the idea of getting to space some day.

She's even a Lieutenant in the Italian Air Force. I bet she'll be getting a promotion very soon.

It's been a few days...

Ok, weeks. I've been slacking.

Now I'm actually sick, or it feels like it. In my travels around the world I've had dengue fever a couple of times and let me tell you, it hurts. It hurts everywhere; hands, feet, back, all the major muscle groups and it's a migraine royal right behind the eyes. And that's what this feels like, since Tuesday.

It's not possible for a guy to get dengue in Germany, even in summer time.

I'm feeling better tonight, but I've still got the headache. I hope this improves dramatically in the next day. Alemannia is playing the first game of the season tomorrow night and I would like to go watch the game.

I miss WalMart

I know, not everyone is going to agree with me on this topic. WalMart is after all, not the most progressive company when it comes to their employees or the communities where those big box stores are sitting. But go ahead, try living without one once you get a taste.

WalMart pulled out of Germany a couple of years ago, not long after we moved back to Aachen and I could finally shop there. It was great! They had stuff that can be really hard to find in this country. Like Cheddar Cheese. I love cheddar cheese but you won't find it in most grocery stores. I know, not good for the diet, but I grew up on that stuff and every once in a while you want some.

I think it's called Comfort Food.

Well, enter Edeka. It's a grocery chain here and they've started to open some larger floor space outlets, with a better selection that includes Cheddar Cheese! As a matter of fact their newest store in Aachen is in the location where WalMart was. Go figure.

They also put out some cute commercials from time to time. This one features their cheese selection with the guy behind the glass counter naming each and every cheese the little kid points at, including the country where the cheese comes from. Ok, it's in German but it's only 20 seconds long. Watch it through to the end. The guy behind the counter knows where everything comes from...


...including "Frau Wiesener from Steinstrasse". Cute commercial, and whoever said Germans have no sense of humor?

The citizenship test

The German government has introduced a "citizenship test" to the process of becoming a German citizen. The test is just a part of the process, but there is an awful lot of pissing and moaning coming from some of the socialist politicians, particularly the SPD. More than a few immigrant groups are complaining too and I don't see what the problem is.

One of the complaints from the Turkish immigrant groups is that the test is "insensitive to Muslim culture", and they point to one particular question that asks a fairly pointed question about marriage. Islam allows a man to have up to 4 wives, so long as he treats them equally. Polygamy isn't allowed in Germany and this test makes that point fairly clear. According to The New Encyclopedia of Islam the practice is fairly rare these days, so I'm not sure how this is "insensitive".

I think the politicians are the worst of the complainers. Sebastian Edathy is an SPD member of the Bundestag and is himself from an immigrant family. His complaint is that the hurdles are already high enough, and besides he says, "many Germans couldn't pass this test".

I don't understand that comment at all. I passed the test with a score of 27/33 and it looks like a few Americans did too. The test is only in German, but that is sort of the point. I'm not German. I wasn't born here, I didn't grow up here, and I didn't learn German until I came to live here. I imagine most of the Americans on that Expat website are in the same situation.

If we can pass this test? How could a German not pass this thing? For that matter, how could the Turks who are here, were born here, raised here, went to school here, and learned German as children not pass this test?

As for the whole idea of the test being "insensitive", more than a few of the immigrants to this country could give less of a shit about the laws in Germany, never mind the culture. Almost half of all violent crimes in Germany are commited by young men from immigrant families. That fact has started yet another round of political discussion on the topic of deporting immigrant criminals who don't happen to be citizens.

If deportations become law I'm sure we'll see rush of people wanting to take this test. I bet Murat Kurnaz wishes he had taken German citizenship before he set out on Jihad to Afghanistan.

Euro 2008 is over

I must admit, I don't mind. It's been three weeks of soccer on television almost every night of the week. For the first two weeks it was two games per night. I've heard the national anthems sung so many times that I could probably sing all of them, even the Spanish anthem, and that one doesn't even have any words.

The one thing I did miss though was "God Save the Queen". England didn't qualify for this tournament, so we didn't get to hear the British hooligans singing that song three or four times per game. But then none of them got arrested for anything either, so maybe that's a good thing?

Spain won, and they deserved to win. They had more scoring chances than Germany, and better chances too. In a few days, when the UEFA internet police give up terrorising youtube.com, I'll look for a highlights clip. Spain had a beautiful goal shot that went off the post and the ball went back in to play. I was sitting in the pub for this game and I'm sure that a couple of people near me were close to a heart attack with that shot.

Still, a lot of commentators were saying that things are looking up for the German national team. Hey, they came third in the World Cup two years ago, and now they placed second in the European Championship. In reality the best soccer is played in Europe, so this was an important tournament. In international play the Argentine and Brazilian teams are powerful, but most of their players play for European clubs. The German team can compete with all of them.

I saw the interviews with a few of the German players, the coach Jogi Loew, and even Angela Merkel. Yeah, they're disappointed, but they're all talking positive and it's obvious that the next step will be the World Cup in 2010 in South Africa. We aren't facing a National Mental Melt Down over this. Which is a good thing, because when Germany goes NMMD, it's not a good day in the neighborhood.

The guy I feel sorry for is Michael Ballack. He is the national team Captain for Germany and he has been there for quite a while now. He plays in England for Chelsea FC at the club level. Between his record with Germany and Chelsea, he has come second or third in almost every major title that he has played for, for the last three years.

I'm serious. The World Cup, the English Premiere League, the League Cup, the UEFA Champions League, and now the European Championship. Although to be fair, Chelsea won the English League cup in 2007. They came 2nd in 2008.

Michael Ballack has to be asking himself, "What does it take?" But he's only 31 years old and I'm sure he'll be around for the World Cup 2010.

ed. note; it's midnight. I'll update this with links and video sometime tomorrow.

Arribas, Espania.

The second round

Russia beat Sweden last night, in the last of the group play games, and have advanced to the quarter-finals along with Portugal and Germany, Croatia and Turkey, Spain and Italy, and Russia will be playing against The Netherlands for their quarter-final game.

Tonight is the first of those games with Portugal playing Germany. I'm not sure what to think about this one. Portugal has come out as one of the strongest teams so far. Their style is fast, almost acrobatic, and then they get faster. Germany is going to have their work cut out for them. A slow methodical game of "keep away" could be their best option, so this game could be a little bit boring.

Germany will be looking for an opportunity like they had against Austria, where Michael Ballack re-discovered his cannon. Check out the video. The goal keeper had no chance at this one.