"For the first two weeks, I'm going to just sit on my rocking chair on the porch."
"Yes, but after that?"
"Dann fang ich ganz ganz langsam an zu schaukeln."
(The punchline was funnier in German).
|
|
"So you're retired! What do you plan to do with yourself?"
"For the first two weeks, I'm going to just sit on my rocking chair on the porch." "Yes, but after that?" "Dann fang ich ganz ganz langsam an zu schaukeln." (The punchline was funnier in German).
0 Comments
"Our village is pretty quiet, but we try to be helpful to outsiders. A man drives up to our street in a car with Berlin plates. He gets out, and, spying me, comes over and says, 'Sir, I'm a stranger here and don't know my way around. Could you direct me to the nearest hotel?' 'Sure,' says I, 'Go as far as the butcher's mother-in-law's place, turn right at the former baker's, and it's kitty-corner from the schoolmaster's garden shed.'"
-from a local caberet show R. is still trying to figure out this exchange at the gas station:
Tankwart: Would you like a coffee with that, sir? R.: Nein, danke. T: How about a coupon for a donut with a coffee for the next time you buy gas? R. No. I'm probably not the Zielgruppe for coffee here (meaning: I never buy coffee at the gas station because I am too frugal). T: Ach, so alt sind Sie doch nicht. (= oh, you're not all that old, Sir = uhh? what? Student: So, you teach the same class in intercultural communications at 8, at 10, and again at 2 p.m.?
Me: That's right. S: Man, that must be boring. Me, turning up the radio: This song was popular when I was about your age, T. My friends and I used to dance to it and pretend we were putting on shows.
T: I wish I could go back in time to when you were a little girl. Just I would bring iPhones and iPads and stuff. Dortmund. The one with the crazy commissioner. This time he was REALLY crazy, somehow even more than before, and it got to be too much for me. When he was throttling his co-worker, the middle-aged woman, it felt personal. I didn't follow the side plot, about the 'murder' (? car accident murder?) of his wife and daughter: could not understand the coroner's report and how it related to their murder. I felt like the writers were relying too much on our remembering what happened from the last Dortmunder Tatort, and I, for one, do not have a memory equal to it. Or perhaps it is because I now crochet granny squares during Tatort and miss the crucial bits.
There was a continuing side-plot to the middle-aged policewoman that I did not recall until it was completely over. Yeah she was in a hotel. Right, does she order gigolos? Was that where it was going? Over before it began. The commissioners (English word?) are getting too complicated. In the old days they were simply allowed to 'be,' with a rather static backstory. The current crop has a back story every bit as busy as the plot and it is too much. The two young police officers were a welcome breath of normality against their cuckoo middle-aged pendants, were it not for the fact that they are a couple, yet the girl is WAAAAYYY TOO GOOD for the boy. She could do so much better. The girl is meant to be a young deutsch-Türkin, and the guys is of course interested in her culture, family, all the things she is rejecting (?). I do see potential in this story arc. If only the guy wasn't so incredibly unattractive. The actual plot of Tatort... not very interesting. It occurs to me that I may have seen one too many Tatort by now. They all repeat themselves. A favorite motif is the rape and exploitation of young women. This time only one woman bore the brunt, instead of whole roomfuls of East Europeans smuggled in as prostitutes. No. Not my favorite Tatort ever. We received a handwritten invitation to New Year's Eve; it was lying on the mat in front of our house door when I came home from swimming with my daughter.
When I called my friend to (regretfully) decline, I asked her why she didn't knock on the door and deliver it in person. My husband and sons were home. The house was dark, so it never occurred to her we were there. Probably everyone was sitting in a darkened room with just the glow of a screen before them! I found something 'typisch deutsch' in the wording of the invitation: "Ab 21 Uhr laden wir Euch ein, im engeren Kreis in das neue Jahr hineinzufeiern. Mitzubringen ist nur gute Laune, denn Sekt haben wir besorgt und gegessen habt Ihr zu Hause ;)" Very cool how she made it clear she is not cooking dinner, huh? I like the "freche" emoticon... This is an example of German frankness that I find praiseworthy. The expectations are all laid out and dealt with. Sure, most invitations for New Year's include dinner, but perhaps we wouldn't've been invited if it came down to preparing a big meal for us. I would definitely attend if we didn't already have plans. Reading student homework on phatic communication; love this guy's summary: The British way is more bloomy than the German way. Why should I always make small talk with someone even if I don't want to talk to him. Or why should I say at first 4 sentences to lead to the 1 I wanted to say.
Or this tip: "This etiquette and the euphemistic way of talking in Britain could be important in making economic deals. You have to know that's not the reality how they describe things its more an ironic/euphemistic way. So German companies have to be careful if they want to buy a British one." |