I haven't mentioned politics in a long time, Nancy....
In 1963, President Kennedy delivered a speech in Berlin, Germany that included one of the most famous sentences of his Presidency: "Ich bin ein Berliner" -- meant to mean, "I am a Berliner" -- a citizen of Berlin. The Berlin Wall had just gone up, the city was glaringly divided. So he was saying, We are with you, citizens of Berlin, ready to stand against the division, the Communists, whatever...
But to many Germans, at least supposedly, the word "Berliner" is better known as the popular name of a certain jelly-filled pastry. The legend goes that JFK was inadvertedly saying to the Germans, when translated, "I am a jelly doughnut" (I've wondered what he would have said if Hamburg had been the divided city instead -- "I am a Hamburger"?)..
This week, Barack Obama, candidate for president, is on a tour of various countries, including Afghanistan and Iraq (and some photo ops with the troops), and then on to a couple of countries in Europe, including Germany... I'm not sure what he'll be doing in Germany, but at one point there was discussion of having a rally at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, where he would make a speech in front of tens of thousands of cheering Germans... Now, make no mistake, I'll vote for the dude, and I understand that he is quite popular in Europe (the rock-star thing again), but isn't this a little weird -- and maybe a bit arrogant -- for a U.S. presidential candidate to be making what are essentially campaign speeches in other countries?.. We'll see how this all goes this week.
*****
We said Auf Wiedersehn to our German girls, Jana and Saskia, this past Wednesday and were surprised how much we missed them after they were gone!
Showing posts with label Jana. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jana. Show all posts
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
you lose some and you Wynn some
Day Nine. It was 108 degrees in Las Vegas this afternoon when Jerry called me. He and Jana and Saskia had just checked into the Wynn Hotel, one of the newest and most extravagant of the newer casino hotels in Vegas. They loved the hotel and were heading for the pool, which they definitely deserved after these past few days in the July heat of Arizona and New Mexico and changing tires on gravel roads and a couple of bad hotels along the way. Tonight they are going to a Cirque du Soleil show, O, at the Belaggio.
They're supposed to check out tomorrow, and I tell Jerry they should stay at the Wynn one more night. Jana and Saskia, who must be worn out by now from all these miles they've covered, are looking out of their 21st-floor hotel room at miles of neon and glitz and are surrounded by air conditioning and room service. Skip Utah, I say. Pamper yourselves.
(Can you understand why I didn't go on this trip?)
They're supposed to check out tomorrow, and I tell Jerry they should stay at the Wynn one more night. Jana and Saskia, who must be worn out by now from all these miles they've covered, are looking out of their 21st-floor hotel room at miles of neon and glitz and are surrounded by air conditioning and room service. Skip Utah, I say. Pamper yourselves.
(Can you understand why I didn't go on this trip?)
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
shuffling through the quietude
Last week, I had to sit through a two-day conference to get continuing education credits before the June 30 deadline, and the only thing I got out of the conference was a prize I won by throwing my business card into a booth vendor's drawing. What I won was a speaker system for an iPod. Pretty cool, right?.. Except that I didn't own an iPod.
Well, I couldn't just sit there looking at that unopened speaker box, and I do have my consumerist tendencies at times, so I headed to Best Buy to buy an iPod.... and, of course, I couldn't get the cheapest iPod, I let myself be talked into a cool one, capable of holding 1800 songs. So far, four days later, I've put 180 songs on it from my CD collection, and I'm thinking, how am I going to come up with another 1620 songs that I want to listen to repeatedly? I'm anguishing about what to load and what to not load.
The good news is that I've only had the iPod in my ears once so far, but I must say I do love having the songs loaded onto my computer (on iTunes). This computer has great sound, and I have it blaring, sub-woofers and all, while I write to you good folks. I'm a "shuffle" addict, so it's shuffling through my crazy assortment of 180 (so far) songs. Right now, a Leon Russell song is playing -- Chopin might be next!
(So far, I haven't used the speakers that I won!).
*****
Jerry and the note-in-the-bottle girls are on Day Two of their trip through the Southwest. For three days, they are on a "working dude ranch" 9000 feet above sea level somewhere in a remote part of Colorado (The nearest town is 26 miles away -- by gravel road!). They spent much of the day today riding horses. Jana and Saskia own a horse, so they are used to such things. Jerry has a sore butt tonight.
It's quiet here without him and our visitors.... well, except for the tunes blasting.
Well, I couldn't just sit there looking at that unopened speaker box, and I do have my consumerist tendencies at times, so I headed to Best Buy to buy an iPod.... and, of course, I couldn't get the cheapest iPod, I let myself be talked into a cool one, capable of holding 1800 songs. So far, four days later, I've put 180 songs on it from my CD collection, and I'm thinking, how am I going to come up with another 1620 songs that I want to listen to repeatedly? I'm anguishing about what to load and what to not load.
The good news is that I've only had the iPod in my ears once so far, but I must say I do love having the songs loaded onto my computer (on iTunes). This computer has great sound, and I have it blaring, sub-woofers and all, while I write to you good folks. I'm a "shuffle" addict, so it's shuffling through my crazy assortment of 180 (so far) songs. Right now, a Leon Russell song is playing -- Chopin might be next!
(So far, I haven't used the speakers that I won!).
*****
Jerry and the note-in-the-bottle girls are on Day Two of their trip through the Southwest. For three days, they are on a "working dude ranch" 9000 feet above sea level somewhere in a remote part of Colorado (The nearest town is 26 miles away -- by gravel road!). They spent much of the day today riding horses. Jana and Saskia own a horse, so they are used to such things. Jerry has a sore butt tonight.
It's quiet here without him and our visitors.... well, except for the tunes blasting.
Monday, June 30, 2008
what happens when Jana and Saskia visit
Jana and Saskia, the note-in-the bottle girls from Germany, arrived last Thursday, several hours after John and Mary left (In between the two drives to the airport and carrying a big price tag, a replacement for our blown-up air-conditioning unit was installed. It was a busy day!). Jana and Saskia are 18 and 19 years old, respectively, and we were a little nervous that we wouldn't know how to entertain them, since, truth be told, we hardly knew them (see my 6.17.08 post). We needn't have worried. They are fun to be around and are excellent house guests.
Their first impression of this country, on this their first trip to the United States, is that everything is so BIG, compared to Europe: big buildings, big stores, big houses, big cars, etc. Right now, as I write this, they are at the Mall of America, the BIGGEST shopping-&-entertainment center in the country. Tomorrow they fly with Jerry to Denver, where the three of them will start a 12-day road trip adventure in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and then back to Colorado to fly back to Minnesota. There's plenty of big stuff out in those states too, though at least most of it isn't man-made.
Yesterday afternoon I took them over to a German restaurant in St. Paul, the Glockenspiel, to watch the Euro2008 soccer final match between Germany and Spain, which would have been more fun if Germany had won, but it was a packed-house full of enthusiastic, German-speaking fans. Jana, smiling, said to me at one point during the game, "Right now, this does not feel like America!"
Their first impression of this country, on this their first trip to the United States, is that everything is so BIG, compared to Europe: big buildings, big stores, big houses, big cars, etc. Right now, as I write this, they are at the Mall of America, the BIGGEST shopping-&-entertainment center in the country. Tomorrow they fly with Jerry to Denver, where the three of them will start a 12-day road trip adventure in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and then back to Colorado to fly back to Minnesota. There's plenty of big stuff out in those states too, though at least most of it isn't man-made.
Yesterday afternoon I took them over to a German restaurant in St. Paul, the Glockenspiel, to watch the Euro2008 soccer final match between Germany and Spain, which would have been more fun if Germany had won, but it was a packed-house full of enthusiastic, German-speaking fans. Jana, smiling, said to me at one point during the game, "Right now, this does not feel like America!"
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
the note-in-the-bottle story
in case you haven't heard this story...
It was December 31, 1999, Y2K Eve (and, co-incidentally, a year to the day from when Jerry and I had met, but that's another story)...
Jerry and I were on the beach in Anguilla, an island in the Caribbean near St. Martin... We were staying in a house on the water where we had a beach all to ourselves... Jerry, being Jerry, had brought along a box of large trash bags, and he has an unusual habit, as part of his vacation de-stressing routine, of walking along and picking up trash, cleaning up the beach. There was plenty of trash on the beach that day because there had just been a hurricane hitting the island a month before.
I was sitting in a beach chair nearby, reading a book (of course), when he came running over to me, all excited. He had found an old bottle containing what appeared to be a note inside. He broke open the bottle, and we tried to read the writing on the brittle old piece of paper. It was in German. Being Americans, we of course are not bi-lingual, so we brought the old note back home with us to find somebody to interpret.
The note, as it turned out, had been written in 1995 and signed by a five-year-old girl named Jana, put in the bottle and tossed in the ocean in the Canary Islands. The bottle had somehow made it all the way across the Atlantic Ocean and ended up on that beach in Anguilla.
The note contained Jana's address in Germany, so of course Jerry wrote to her. Soon he got an email back from Jana and her parents. Later that year, June of 2000, we were going to be in Germany along with Jon and Tom (we were celebrating Tom's graduation from high school), so we arranged to meet Jana and her family in Cologne. Jana by then was ten years old.
We hit it off with the parents and became friends. We visited them two other times when we were in Europe and stayed at their house one of those times.
Anyway, where I'm heading with this is that Jana, now 18 years old, and her older sister Saskia are visiting us here in Minneapolis for three weeks, arriving a week from Friday. Part of that time, about ten days, they and Jerry are traveling to the American southwest, and I'll tell you more about that later. This will be their first time in the U.S.
By the way, the note from the bottle is now framed and hanging in our living room.
And arriving this Friday are my sister Mary and brother-in-law John from New Jersey. They'll be here for a week, and we are very much looking forward to their visit. I'd tell you more now, but this post is already too long, and, besides, they deserve an entry all their own. :-)
It was December 31, 1999, Y2K Eve (and, co-incidentally, a year to the day from when Jerry and I had met, but that's another story)...
Jerry and I were on the beach in Anguilla, an island in the Caribbean near St. Martin... We were staying in a house on the water where we had a beach all to ourselves... Jerry, being Jerry, had brought along a box of large trash bags, and he has an unusual habit, as part of his vacation de-stressing routine, of walking along and picking up trash, cleaning up the beach. There was plenty of trash on the beach that day because there had just been a hurricane hitting the island a month before.
I was sitting in a beach chair nearby, reading a book (of course), when he came running over to me, all excited. He had found an old bottle containing what appeared to be a note inside. He broke open the bottle, and we tried to read the writing on the brittle old piece of paper. It was in German. Being Americans, we of course are not bi-lingual, so we brought the old note back home with us to find somebody to interpret.
The note, as it turned out, had been written in 1995 and signed by a five-year-old girl named Jana, put in the bottle and tossed in the ocean in the Canary Islands. The bottle had somehow made it all the way across the Atlantic Ocean and ended up on that beach in Anguilla.
The note contained Jana's address in Germany, so of course Jerry wrote to her. Soon he got an email back from Jana and her parents. Later that year, June of 2000, we were going to be in Germany along with Jon and Tom (we were celebrating Tom's graduation from high school), so we arranged to meet Jana and her family in Cologne. Jana by then was ten years old.
We hit it off with the parents and became friends. We visited them two other times when we were in Europe and stayed at their house one of those times.
Anyway, where I'm heading with this is that Jana, now 18 years old, and her older sister Saskia are visiting us here in Minneapolis for three weeks, arriving a week from Friday. Part of that time, about ten days, they and Jerry are traveling to the American southwest, and I'll tell you more about that later. This will be their first time in the U.S.
By the way, the note from the bottle is now framed and hanging in our living room.
And arriving this Friday are my sister Mary and brother-in-law John from New Jersey. They'll be here for a week, and we are very much looking forward to their visit. I'd tell you more now, but this post is already too long, and, besides, they deserve an entry all their own. :-)
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