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Interlude

 

Guten Abend aus Regensburg!

See this train? I'm not on it (although I was when I took this picture). Nor have I been to church, nor have I been to German class. Where have I been? Home, in the apartment, mostly lying down. Nothing like the cold/flu/covid (or whatever) to make one missing in action. Since Pilsen, when I think I was coming down with it, I've been stuck at home. Not having all my normal things to do, I've actually felt boredom. I've been coughing my head off, and consuming tissues by the fistfuls. Ugh! But tonight I can say I seem to over the worst of it. 

In my forced convalescence, I've watched a lot of German TV, including Aschenputtel, known in English as Cinderella, which I started watching a few months ago, but couldn't finish. I wanted to find out if the stepsisters actually hacked off parts of their feet to make the shoe fit, as in the German version of Cinderella. I also wanted to know if the birds pecked their eyes out. Sure enough, the stepmother actually is depicted as hacking off the heel of the one (only one in this version) daughter. But they didn't snow the birds pecking out her eyes. I guess even modern German sensibilities couldn't allow that to be presented to modern German Kinder. I also watched the first "Harry Potter", auf Deutsch. Some German TV channels are publicly owned, which means they're supported by the Rundfunk fees, which everybody pays, whether they watch or not. The commercial stations support themselves with commercials. In timing it last night, it seemed to be 9 minutes of commercials to 23 minutes of show. That's rather inconvenient, but it does allow for long bathroom breaks or time to make popcorn. 

The temperature reached the 70's Fahrenheit today--Alaskan summer! We had windows open, but in Germany, they don't have screens. Maybe they don't have the bugs we do. Guess we'll find out. So far, only a few harmless gnats have flown in. It's definitely spring here. I noticed the buds on the tree outside our kitchen window were bigger this evening than this morning, and the air is continually filled with melodious birdsong. 

Tonight we go on Sommerzeit (Summer time, or as we know it, Daylight Savings Time). Even the Germans 'spring forward'. They just wait a few more weeks. I can go back to figuring out the time difference between here and Alaska by adding just 2, not 3, and then flipping am or pm. 

We're down to just over 3 weeks until we repatriate ourselves. I haven't experienced retired life in a 'normal' way, yet. Right after school was out I had the knee surgery. Still recovering, we came to Germany. In Germany, I've increased my mileage dramatically as the knee has recovered, but life here isn't the same as at home, so I still don't know what 'normal' is supposed to feel like. I don't think I'm going to know for some time. As the Germans say, "Ich weiss nur Bahnhof" which literally means, "I only know the train station." In other words, I don't know much. 

Pictured above is a Bahnhof, in case you're wondering. I plan to hop a train to Salzburg on Monday. 

Tschüss 


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