Really? Wirklich?: asiatisch

asiatisch a Asian

   People in Stuttgart go crazy for a chain of pan-Asian (let’s say Chinese-y) take out counter called Hotalo.  Any given lunchtime, the lineup outside its outposts can reach up to sixty people, winding around the transit station or shopping centre.  Heaven forbid you should attempt to breach this line, say to get to one of the lunch counters with a more reasonable 4 or 5 person queue.  Luckily, many Germans have a 1 or 2 hour Mittagspause or lunch break built into their day, so if they want to spend 30 minutes in line for some chicken chowmein that’s been sitting under a heat lamp for several hours, they have all the time in the world do it in.  On a weekend it’s as popular as an ice cream café (and that’s saying a lot – dairy is like a religion here - more later.)

   I’m not sure what Hotalo’s draw is – it doesn’t even have that delectable, greasy, steamy, MSG-laden smell that  could lead a blind man to a food court.  On first contact, I had to muster as much non-threatening, anti-budging body language as possible as I made my way to the front of the line in order to peer through the glass  and figure out what kind of food it was.  The smell, for me, is half the mouth-watering experience.   Although I’m not sure that my familiarity with cheap sushi and late-night Chinatown fried rice make a strong case for me being a connoisseur of pan-Asian delights, I think I can safely say that there is a lot less exposure to and expectations from the whole Chines.e food experience  And considering that the Udo-Snack counter has to supplement its Japanese street food fare with Currywurst and hamburgers, I get the feeling that Stuttgarters are happy to limit their experience with Asian food  to Hotalo for the time being. 

   In fact, so loyal are they to Hotalo that they seem to have no interest in trying to recreate the magic at home.  The bottles pictured above, which you may recognize as soy sauce and sesame oil respectively,  two of the most important ingredients for imitating decent Chinese food,  cost me a total of 5,90 Euros in the international section of the discount superstore Kaufland.  Never mind that soy sauce  is available in about fifteen different brands, viscosities and sodium content at my local No Frills in Toronto, where it is shelved alongside the red wine vinegar and olive oil.   Never mind that, on the other hand, Kaufland gives as much floor space up to salty, fizzy, foreign and local types of bottled water as to produce.  Let’s think about the fact that I spent $9 CDN for half a cup of sesame oil and one cup of soy sauce.  I get more soy sauce free with takeout sushi.  Seriously, the sesame oil is the size of a minibar bottle, and even the airlines have come around to recognize that 100 mL is a miserly size. 

   Sadly, I’m going to have to ration my home-made Chinese food intake.  Luckily, my video store categorizes all of its Japanese anime rentals under the title “Asian Food”, so if I could just learn to like manga, I would have a plentiful substitute.  Or, I guess, there’s always Hotalo.  

Word Up: der Ausweis

Ausweis m  identity card, passport; (Mitglieds~, Bilbliotheks etc) card,

  Long after having been stamped through customs, my passport is still an essential part of my life in Germany.  You need your passport to buy a cell phone, set up an internet connection, and open a video rental  account.  You need a passport if someone becomes suspicious of your foreign credit card or just the fact that you are trying to charge a card at all in what seems to be  the country that the credit card industry forgot.  And you will definitely need ID at the grocery store if you accidentally pick up the German beer equivalent of wine coolers  (although a wine cooler is a perfectly acceptable drink here.  Curious.)  Yes, the drinking age is 16.  No, that doesn’t seem to matter if you show a serious lapse of judgement by buying something that doesn’t adhere to the Bavarian Purity Law.  Your suitability for consumption will be weighed.

    But it’s not all take take take.   The German authorities are also so kind as to give you some additional identification to flash at post office clerks and train conductors.  First, you have to register at the local residents’ office with the correct forms filled out in triplicate and a copy of your lease.  You are not allowed to cross out mistakes .  You are not allowed to write in lower case letters.  Your form must be filled out in German.  I practiced writing Kanada with a “K”.  You are not allowed to register on Wednesday or Friday afternoons, or Tuesday or Thursday mornings, or any day between the hours of 12:30 and 2PM, when the office is closed for lunch or for the rest of the day if it is Wednesday or Friday.  The city’s website also advises not to attempt to contact the office on a Monday, when traffic is high. 

    However,  as it turns out, those warnings were all just talk.  That must scare enough people into coming in on the half days to balance things out, because I registered first thing last Monday morning with ease.  It required only the 6 or 7 minutes it took me to figure out that the large stainless steel box built into the wall by the office was not a temperature control panel  but actually printed little numbers and then a short wait among a roomful of very sedate applicants who were quickly dispatched.    The lady crossed out a bunch of information on my form (former address – not in Germany, doesn’t matter) and scribbled – in lower-case script (Canada without a K?) – in between the boxes.  Then she stamped and signed it.  This scratched out, scrawled-over piece of paper was now my official German identification form.

    This new identification is required for a number of specific things.  I have to produce it in order to get a bank account.  I might have to carry it around with me while using the free one-month transit pass that Stuttgart’s transit system awards all newly registered Stuttgarters.  The local video store wants to see it, too.  It’s highly sought after and possibly irreplaceable, but I have to truck it around with me all the time and it is very quickly starting to look terrible.  More terrible, I mean.  Luckily, it’s printed on extra-long A4 paper (the European standard), so there is an extra inch or two I can cut off if the edges start to look too ratty.  I’ll just have to make sure I get a video rental card first.  

Word Up: die Vorstellung

 

Vorstellung f (Bekanntmachen) introduction

    It has come to my attention that I got more than a little bit ahead of myself last week.  Allow me to introduce myself.
    The reason I am busy watching nuns in a hotel lounge while the rest of the world is working is that I am accompanying my boyfriend on a five month stay in Stuttgart, Germany.  He's here to work 50 hours a week, and I am here to develop a connoisseur's taste for all things European.  Let's call it even.
    While on paper it looks like I have all the free time in the world to drink Kaffee in the park, langorously sample strudel from each local Bäckerei, and perform other fanciful activities like, say, blog, I have actually been very busy trying to figure out how Germany works.  It is not like North America.
    Case in point: the toilet.  How does it flush?  Why are there two buttons?  These questions, asked unfortunately only after our landlord had left us alone in our new fully-furnished apartment, provoked an hour-long escapade that took us from curiosity to exasperation to grief.  Thankfully, it was finally resolved by Youtube.
    Now, if it took us an hour to figure out how to flush a toilet here, you can guess how long I've spent trying to figure out how to open a bank account.  If only there was a Youtube video for that.

Word Up: das Himmel

Himmel (nt) heaven


    Today's (very first) word of the day owes its existence to a couple of hours spent in the misleadingly-named Executive Lounge at the hotel.  While it is half-heartedly equipped with newspapers, tables and chairs, and a single internet-enabled computer, in my experience it's used less for business purposes than by cheap hotel guests trying to cobble together a meal out of seven or eight bowls of peanuts and a bunch of bananas.   Hotel staff zipped through the room periodically, making sure that the cooler was full, the window was closed, and that the TV was unreasonably loud.   At first, my concentration was undisturbed. But then, after pointedly ignoring the newsmagazine and some sort of show about windsurfing, I heard the telltale musical stylings of daytime television - in this case, a synthesized orchestra tacked over a reggae beat - and curiousity got the better of me.  This particular music turned out to belong to a sitcom about a gaggle of quirky German nuns. How could I resist?

    "Im Himmels Willen" is apparently in its tenth (!) season on German public television.  It's actually not even daytime fare - it's broadcast at 20:15 every Thursday (that's 8:15 PM for those of you unfamiliar with the 24 hour clock and with poor math skills.  I'm not really sure why German programmes are always shown at fifteen minutes past the hour - it may have something to do with giving German students a reason to learn all the many fascinating ways to say quarter past.)

    I'm not sure if this is an only-in-Germany instance, but an all-nun all-the-time sitcom seems a little weird to me.  I guess it's a way of saying, Hey, we're cool with religion - anyone can laugh at goofy nuns, scoff at lazy nuns, cry with sick nuns, uh - laugh at more goofy nuns, root for nuns in positions of power in a competitive IT firm... It's very light, granny-approved comedy.  I don't think grannies in Canada would be as amenable to having the CBC show a bishop as a comedic character.  It may not be Lindsay Lohan in a wimple, but it's not "Climb Every Mountain" either.

    Plus - why?  When was the last time you thought about a nun?  They don't even run Sister Wendy anymore!  What demographic demonstrated an interest in nunneries?

    As far as cringe-worthy daytime TV, the nuns do a lot better than poor "Sue Thomas, F-B-Eye," in my opinion.  Sure, the show pushes the tradition meets technology concept pretty hard (phonecall from rotary phone to mobile! letter from Vatican delivered by fat guy on motorbike!), but that's better than having a show that revolves around some sick work placement where a handicapped person has to constantly perform inhuman tasks to justify her presence in the group.  That would be like if the nuns were not only working in an IT company, but building a prototype communications satellite in their chicken coop.

    I wish I could tell you how the "The Littlest Hobo"-inspired episode I was watching (dog saves horse that saves girl) ended, but a perhaps-somewhat-more-executive member of the Executive Lounge barged into the lounge, made a beeline for the TV, and turned it off.  I guess some people think nunnery is no laughing matter.