After a year of riding the streetcars and buses of Bremen (great public transportation over here!), I thought I might want a car. It's just a hassle to have to take a cab home with larger grocery purchases. Add to that the exorbitant costs of train and flight tickets anywhere in Germany or Europe, buying a car seemed like a prudent idea.
The financial whiz that I am I sat and worked out what it would cost me to own a car over here. Let's pretend I'm buying a new car. A brand new Ford Focus with minor options such as AC and a GPS system will set you back about 20,000 Euros or 31,448 dollars at today's rate. Add in the cost of insurance at around 140 Euros a month for comprehensive ($220), annual taxes at around 400 Euros ($628), TUV (inspections) at around 80 Euros ($125), two oil changes per year at 70 Euros a pop ($220) PLUS.....drum roll... gasoline of course.
I know that everyone is in an uproar over high gas prices in the U.S. right now; try paying 1.60 Euro per liter which translates to roughly 10 bucks a gallon. Yes, I said TEN BUCKS A GALLON! It's not just expensive - it's obscene!
Final tally: to own a car you will need to shell out 3,500 Euros a year just for upkeep, 190 Euro for car payments and roughly 2,000 Euros for gasoline. Grand total: 7,780 Euros or 12 grand in dollars. I know this is mind boggling and I am amazed as to how many people own cars over here!!
On the flip side I spend maybe 50 Euros for public transport, plus the occasional 25 for a cab. Being the math wizard that I am, I will either have to get a second job to pay for the privilege of owning a car or stick with public transport. Goodness, I still can't get over 10 bucks a gallon...
Random musings about finally growing up...or not.
From: Bremen, Germany
About me: I am but a mortal woman who has lived most of her life questioning everything and rebelling against it all. I've lived day to day, every day until recently; I suddenly realized I was 42. They say wisdom comes with age, I am still learning what it means to be grown up.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
I am not a prude! Am I?
The Germans are a curious bunch. They will tax you to death, provide ten pages of paperwork to fill out if you want anything done and demand months of patience to receive your tax refund. They also embrace nudity whole heartily and with such fervor that I am sometimes taken aback. News in the nude? No biggie. Ride the streetcar in a pair of thongs? No problem. Take a stroll down the street on your bicycle complete nude? Yeah, and?
Switch to German TV and you will be bombarded with nudity everywhere. The favorite amongst all TV ads these days is a model advertising LCD televisions and computers for a local chain Saturn (the German equivalent to Best Buy) completely in the nude. You can see part of the young lady here. Late night German TV is dominated on most channels by various gals (and sometimes guys) begging you to call them and make a date. While this is done in the U.S. as well the Germans take it to an entire different level. Each ad is a soft porn all by itself. Wow, is all I can say.
I asked my co-worker if she had seen it too and she didn't; nor did she believe me. Until someone from down the hall in the IT office screamed: "Did you just see that old guy riding by? He was NAKED!!!!" So there you have it, story corroborated. It was the talk of the office all day.
Entire sections of the beaches at the local lakes are sectioned off for FKK folks (Freikoerperkultur - Free Body Culture, or if you want to be lose, or just plain old nudists). There are resorts that cater to these folks and entire planes can be booked to get there - in the nude. I have to say they take their nudity as seriously as their taxes! Nobody is bothered by it and I suppose my prudishness is viewed as typical verklemmt (inhibited) American. I never thought of myself as verklemmt but I have to admit that in the face of German reality maybe I am, just a little.
All that in your face is just making me a little uneasy and I don't really have a ready answer as to why that is. We are born nude. As kids we love to be nude. We have sex in the nude (most of the time). We shower nude. So where is this reaction coming from? Somewhere along the line someone bread it out of us, that's where! We are taught at Sunday bible study that the body is to be respected and all that and being nude just doesn't demand respect.
Since I no longer subscribe to church doctrine I think I will have to get used to respecting all that nudity around me. Not that you'd ever catch ME taking it all off in public!
Switch to German TV and you will be bombarded with nudity everywhere. The favorite amongst all TV ads these days is a model advertising LCD televisions and computers for a local chain Saturn (the German equivalent to Best Buy) completely in the nude. You can see part of the young lady here. Late night German TV is dominated on most channels by various gals (and sometimes guys) begging you to call them and make a date. While this is done in the U.S. as well the Germans take it to an entire different level. Each ad is a soft porn all by itself. Wow, is all I can say.
My first experience with this nonchalance toward nudity came about my second day in Germany. Riding the streetcar a young man entered wearing nothing but a pair of thongs, an undershirt and shoes. "Stuff" was hanging out everywhere and my son almost had a heart attack. Then of course it was the full assault of German TV (I've since given up watching late night TV here). Today, as I was working away at my desk I happened to glance out of my window and saw... Egads!... a butt naked man in his sixties riding by on his bicycle! There was not a strip of clothing on the old man. I had no words!
I asked my co-worker if she had seen it too and she didn't; nor did she believe me. Until someone from down the hall in the IT office screamed: "Did you just see that old guy riding by? He was NAKED!!!!" So there you have it, story corroborated. It was the talk of the office all day.
Entire sections of the beaches at the local lakes are sectioned off for FKK folks (Freikoerperkultur - Free Body Culture, or if you want to be lose, or just plain old nudists). There are resorts that cater to these folks and entire planes can be booked to get there - in the nude. I have to say they take their nudity as seriously as their taxes! Nobody is bothered by it and I suppose my prudishness is viewed as typical verklemmt (inhibited) American. I never thought of myself as verklemmt but I have to admit that in the face of German reality maybe I am, just a little.
All that in your face is just making me a little uneasy and I don't really have a ready answer as to why that is. We are born nude. As kids we love to be nude. We have sex in the nude (most of the time). We shower nude. So where is this reaction coming from? Somewhere along the line someone bread it out of us, that's where! We are taught at Sunday bible study that the body is to be respected and all that and being nude just doesn't demand respect.
Since I no longer subscribe to church doctrine I think I will have to get used to respecting all that nudity around me. Not that you'd ever catch ME taking it all off in public!
Labels: germany, naked news, nudity
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
The value of keeping a diary
I started keeping a diary at 14. During those tumultuous days my mother was married to husband number three and he was barely 10 years my senior. I still don't understand whatever possessed her to marry him although I can well imagine what possessed him to marry her. After all, I was the hapless object of his crude advances until I finally got out of there. One should not speak ill of the dead, or so I've been told, but he was one sick perverted puppy.
It was a truly trying time for the teenage girl that I was; already lost and confused with my growing up and oft mental confusions, I had no outlet for my frustrations and heartaches. I started a diary. Carefully hidden under my pillow I faithfully jotted down disjointed thoughts and was as brutally honest with my paper friend as I could never be with anyone else. Until one day my step-father announced that he had read it and I got the beating of my life. I guess he didn't like my candid evaluations of his deformed brain.
Since then, I've started keeping diaries through the years, especially during my less than happy marriages. One thing I never could do again is brutally honest and pour my soul into this self-help tool. I always wrote with the underlying fear that someone would eventually get their hands on it and read it. Such a breach of privacy and trust can never be restored with the reader. My most intimate thoughts are not the bestseller of the day nor did (or would) I ever invite anyone to do so. I censored myself and consequently the value of keeping a diary in the first place was nil. I may as well have been working on a novel.
Since I am no longer in a relationship and my son has no interest in my inner workings (I am just mom and a non-person) I do believe I will give it another try. To bear my soul and have a dialogue with myself could be therapeutic and provide some relief. Lord knows I need it! The cynical me of today is not someone I like very much most of the time. I long for the joy that I was able to experience before I got whacked over the head with reality. And boy did it ever whack me hard.
I suppose you could deduce that writing a blog is therapeutic in a way since I am writing. However, I am censoring myself and most of the thoughts that need to be said out loud never make it on this page of mine. They may be implied - but never expressed. I have no idea who is reading my rantings on a regular basis or who is simply engaging in a little drive-by reading when landing here through some random Google search.
I argue with myself on this point quite a bit. Do I really expect anyone to read between the lines of a blog? Most folks don't have that sort of patience cruising Web 2.0. Information overload is not conducive to keeping any one's interest for long. Besides, if I really ripped lose someone might call the paddy waggon. Ha!
I'm feeling a bit contemplative tonight, but I am 40something and I'm entitled dammit.
Sunday, June 01, 2008
*I* is more than a pronoun
My English teacher would always remind me not to start every sentence with "I", which proved difficult when recounting for the 10th time "What I did last summer...". Even now I have to re-read my writing (with his grating voice in my ear) and often end up re-writing it. Naturally, if I'm recounting a memory and every other sentence begins with "I" this merely means that I am at the center of all the great action. I am the heroine and the center of the universe in my recount of whatever adventure (real or imagined as it were). So why such disdain for "I"?
In management classes we were taught "there is no "I" in team". Granted, this makes sense - even if quite a few of my past and current co-workers apparently never took a management class since I get to hear "I did this, I suggested this, I re-worked that..." on and on ad nauseum. But I digress again...
In the context of a personal blog this little pronoun will inevitably creep in countless times. Afterall I am talking about myself, my thoughts, my ponderings and endless philosophizing. Although I have learned over time to be courteous to strangers, put others before me, care for those not able to do so (at least where my children are concerned) and have general compassion for other's plights.. the fact is my ego, my Id, my superego will always take precedence over anything else.
For better or worse I am stuck with me. I can no more divorce myself than I could chop off my right arm and eat it. Ok, maybe a strange analogy but if you really think about it, it fits. Our thoughts as people always revolve around us, even if our mouths say otherwise. We think about the wrongs done to us (real or perceived), dreams and goals we want to accomplish, beat ourselves up for making mistakes, regret our actions (or not), draw conclusions from our own experiences and often project those unto others. It's all about ME, MYSELF and "I". Always.
One could argue that Mother Teresa never thought about herself in her quest to aid those unfortunate souls in Calcutta slums. I'm of the opinion that unless she had defective genes, she did indeed think about herself a great deal. At the very least I am willing to bet that she often grappled with her faith being exposed to such suffering all the time. So again, there is the "I".
Even when we pray, which I don't much anymore, we often talk with God or whatever we want to call this higher power in terms that are comforting to us. Psalm 23 says, "The Lord is MY shepherd, "I" shall not want..." So there we have it. Even in the bible it was all about us. Being that I am really not a religious person nor really know much about the bible save for this remnant of my grandma's teachings, I will rest my case.
When I lay awake at night ruminating my past, my day, my week... I certainly don't attach meaning to everything, but I do try to draw conclusions that will help me get up the next day. Else, what is the point? I can draw paralells all day long in what others have done or said but in the end it is only my decisions, my thoughts, my experiences that really matter. Those are the only reasons that could convince me to change my mind, change my ways or change my way of living.
My thought for the day: unless it is the business world where "I" certainly doesn't have a place, in every day living I feel it's paramount to inject a lot of "I" into our thoughts. I certainly would go bananas if I were required to only think about you, them, they and theirs.
