Discovering the scarf

Usually when the weather comes up as a topic of conversation, it’s a signal of banality. But let’s talk about the weather. Being that most people who aren’t from California think that it’s just a gigantic beach, I often get asked how I’m faring in the coldness and snow. Now that we are in the deepest part of winter, I feel like I can make a valid judgment of what it’s like to live through an average German winter (the picture right here is a view from my bedroom window just before Christmas).

When you step outside and it’s 11 degrees Fahrenheit, you immediately begin to question your motives for leaving the house. When you go to watch biathlon, a sport that your don’t quite understand in the first place, and it’s below freezing but somehow raining, you aren’t sure if you should be upset, or marvel at the physical anomaly that is Sub-Zero Rain. Living in a place with a “real” winter is quite a change, but all in all it’s manageable. There are definitely those moments in which you wonder if it’s physiologically possible for your fingers to fall off, or when the sole of your shoe decides that it’s sick of being stepped on and drops off right before you step in a half frozen puddle and naturally you get frustrated. However, sooner or later when you thaw out in whichever protective shelter you’ve found refuge in, the mind has a way of helping you forget just how miserable it is outside. And if your refuge has windows, you might even be able to admire how beautiful a light snow can be, or how the wind can make snowflakes dance on the road, or how the kids down the street made a hermaphroditic snow(wo)man with unbelievable anatomical detail.

In my very limited experience with winter I've found that there's really only one maxim which holds true: There's no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing. If you do yourself up right, then the brutality of the weather is all but neutralized. There have been a couple pieces of clothing that have been crucial for me, which heretofore were totally foreign objects. After spending the month of November with hands frozen to my crutches, I invested in a pair of wool lined gloves. They changed my life. A nice wool jacket will also get you far, not to mention make you look stylish and metropolitan, even if you're wearing a t-shirt underneath (which I do all the time). Fur lined shoes were also a good investment because toasty toes are almost as important as toasty fingers. But far and away the best discovery I've made living in a German winter is the scarf. We'll leave out the benefits of adding color to your outfit that compliments your eyes or skin tone and just talk about the importance of plugging your neck hole. Yeah, I said your neck hole. When you wear a jacket, most of the time it doesn't fit snugly around the neck region, leaving a small, inconspicuous area for sneaky, ice-cold air to sneak in and seize grasp around your chest. This leak is called the neck hole, and there is nothing better to plug it up that a nice puffy scarf. I was skeptical at first, but I tried it and it revolutionized the whole experience of being outside. Plus I can choose scarves that match my hat.

So, all in all, winter is survivable to say the least. I think I also have the benefit of being a hot blooded person which allows me to walk down the street to the bakery in the morning in a t-shirt, sweats and Birkenstocks, but that is neither here nor there. What's important is that I don't live in between Chicago and Boston where no amount of good clothing will save you from Blizzardmaggedon 2011.

Is this gonna be forever?

At the beginning of January I flew to Chicago for a NSLC administrative summit and experienced a very strange phenomenon: Reverse Culture Shock (herein referred to as RCS). It actually quite unsettling to feel so at odds with something you've known and felt comfortable with your entire life - it's roughly equivalent to feeling like a stranger in your own parents' house. It was something that I wanted to end as quickly as possible because it seemed so unnatural, but now that I'm back and have had time to process the whole thing, it's pretty interesting and quite amusing.

I experienced RCS for the first time when I came back to California after a semester in Córdoba, Spain, but that was minor league in comparison to the cultural unease I felt in Chicago. Actually, coming back from Spain, the shock was limited entirely to UGG boots. Yup, UGGs. Let me explain: Spain is a country where getting dressed is almost as important as soccer, and that's saying something. When you leave the house, you are properly done up for the day, regardless of the length of your venture or the weather. It's 9 o'clock in the morning and I need to go to the fruit stand downtown and it's 95 degrees? Ok, let me grease my hair up, throw on a button down shirt, nice tight jeans and a pair of low profile leather shoes that click on the cobblestone as I walk the 500 yards to the fruit stand. The same trip in the United States might look something like this: I do a once over on my hair with some hot water, throw on some workout shorts and flip flops and get in the car to drive the 30 seconds to the corner store. Needless to say, while in Spain I got used to people looking chíc whenever they left the house. When I got back to Davis, it felt a little bizarre to see thousands of people shuffling around in sweat suits all day long every day, but what was even stranger to me were UGG boots. In Spain you might be lucky to see somebody wearing those as house shoes, but probably not even there. In the US girls wear them like it's their job, and even worse, as if they look good. Excuse me? You're coming to work at a customer service job wearing those huge, puffy, dumpy, dripping-wet-at-the-toes moon slippers? In my opinion, there should be a social ordinance banning UGGs in public - they're just too...UGGly.

Anyway, this post isn't supposed to be about Spain, some of my pent up anti-UGG sentiments just came bubbling up (perhaps because the all-day slippers made the jump and are now catching on in Germany). As I said before, the RCS that developed over the course of my six days in Chicago was quite a bit stronger and way more uncomfortable. There were a ton of small things that made me double take, but I think I'll just hit on the major points:

Germany is one of the most advanced countries in the world with what is undoubtedly the best standard of engineering anywhere on the globe. However, the are a little bit behind on the technology curve, and I mean that in a good way. The most striking difference is the connection that people have with their cell phones. In Germany, I can be hanging out with a bunch of students just sitting and chatting on a Saturday night and see two phones in two hours. I rode the metro a lot in Chicago, and I would say that I saw the cell phones of at least 70% of the people in the train and probably close to 40% of the metro patrons were on their phone the entire train ride. It's unbelievable and discomforting. Don't get me wrong, cell phones are a fantastic invention in my opinion and I'm glad that I have one, but the incessant need to text, check the internet or simply flip through the thousands of applications on a phone is over-the-top and overwhelming. Maybe I'm from more of an old school mentality or maybe I'm slowly turning into a German. Either way, it was unreal to me how lonely and isolated the atmosphere can be in a train that is packed full of people.

The second and more lasting RCS effect that I battled was the language. Of course it was a little startling at first to hear everybody around me speaking English when I expected German to be coming out of their mouths, but what was truly difficult was the reverse translation that I had to do in my head. It's gotten to the point where my thoughts run in German, so naturally the first words that my mouth form are German. Since German wasn't going to get me very far in Chicago, I had to really concentrate to make coherent English sentences come out. I found myself struggling to not simply translate directly from German to English, and a couple times I said things that sounded totally foreign:

"Man, me is hot." instead of "Man, I'm hot." or,
"Me it is equal." in an attempt to say "I don't really care." or,
"We will see us tomorrow, or?" as a butchered version of "See ya tomorrow, right?"

I'm starting to sound like a German immigrant who's American accent is decent, but who's grammar could use a little work. But I have to say the weirdest language incident I had was on the taxi ride to the airport. I was sitting in the front seat and started to chat with the taxi driver about nothing important, but all of a sudden I felt this really uncomfortable sense of closeness to him. Not in a physical sense given that American cars are so wonderfully spacious, rather in a linguistic sense. In many languages, German being one of them, there is a different verb conjugation for the formal and informal uses of "you." Whereas a lot of cultures, like Spanish, are kind of free flowing and loose about the use of the two, German is quite strict. People who have worked in the same office for ten years will often still use the formal version and you can pretty much bet your bottom dollar that any interaction that you have with somebody new who is over the age of 18 will use the formal version. The girl who cuts my hair is 20 years old and knows that I am 22, yet we still use the formal version with each other. Normally I would tell her that it's ok for her to use the informal (something that I am socially allowed to do as a. the customer and b. the older person), but it's a good place for me to practice using the formal conjugations. She has no idea that she is a linguistic laboratory for me, but she does know that I like my hair washed before and after my haircut. Either way, I've gotten used to a society with these linguistic barriers for how well you know a person, and as I was chatting with the taxi driver, I felt this weird sense of "I don't know you at all Mister - this 'you' business is getting a little too personal for me." Since I've been back I've mulled a lot over the whole use of formal versus informal and the pros and cons and although it is nice to be able to express formality by simply changing the conjugations, I prefer a more relaxed system where there aren't divisions and rules that you have to work around.

Those were really the two major beasts of culture that I found myself face to face with, but I do want to say something about breakfast. America: can I please get a freshly baked pretzel?

2011: Year of the Adventure/Rabbit

According to a friend, I'm "the kind of person who would make New Year's resolutions." I'm not quite sure what the means or how to interpret it, but in any case it's true. I actually made quite a few, but I'll only share the most important ones here:

I. Write the date correctly all year.
For those of you who know me, you'll take note that this is among my resolutions every year. Up to this point, last year was my best attempt. Whereas my hyperattention usually wanes in April, last year I made it to August before my brain turned itself off. I wrote on a receipt at the airport that it was 2002. Pathetic.

II. Write regularly to my Spanish family.
Not maintaining stable contact with my host family in Córdoba is an enormous regret that I have. The four months that I spent with them in 2009 was one of the most important and life changing experiences that I've ever had - not only because I was living and traveling in Spain, but because the connection that I forged with the family (especially my host sister) was very strong. However, on my last night there, my host dad, in a moment of weakness and cynicism, launched into a huge speech about how it was nice to have had me, but in the end the family only hosted for economic reasons and although the time was fun, we would lose contact like all the rest of the students they'd hosted. I assured them that that wouldn't be true, but lo and behold, the contact waned as I became overwhelmed with the obligations of college life in California. After a number of uncomfortable confrontations from my sister about how I let her and the family down, I asked for a clean start yesterday, which she granted me. I am resolute to make it work.

III. Read more news.
Being in touch with what's happening with the world of politics, economics and current events is, in my opinion, an important part of being educated. As such, I'm trying to read more news and broaden the scope of what I know. While getting news from Big Dave's and Jeremia's facebook status updates is informative, it is also about 75% of the time a link to something like a YouTube video of someone saying the word "Ho" on Jeopardy or a disgusting beast of a man trying to eat 40 pizza pockets in two minutes. For those interested, he doesn't manage to do it, but he leaves the camera on as he eats the remainder as a sort of dessert.

IV. Seek more adventure.
I'm young, healthy, have very few obligations, live in a foreign country and am curious to find out what makes the Earth spin. The way I see it, I should be doing nothing other than seeking adventure. And on top of that, finding adventure is simple - I just have to be open to any and all opportunities and people. "Hey Reid, do you want to go outside with me at midnight on New Years and set off this 20 meter Spanish firecracker that is for all intents and purposes a bunch of small bombs strung together? Oh hey Reid, do you want to go stand in the freezing cold and watch a bunch of super fit European women go cross country skiing with guns on their backs? Reid, are you interested in putting on these Lederhosen for a Christmas photo shoot? Yo Reid, would you be down to..." don't finish. The answer is yes. This year I'm going to try and accumulate experiences, because experiences lead to memories and memories are what make life rich. Along the way I'm going to see how ignoring that voice in your head that says "This may be a stupid idea" plays a role in finding adventures. My guess is that it's pretty important.

Now the only question that remains is: will you help me find adventure in 2011?