There's an app for that

Technology certainly has it's good and bad uses.

My computer is a bad use of technology, because it has warped me into a eyeball-to-screen zombie incapable of being without internet and thus contact with the exfernal world (My spell check says exfernal is not a word- but nay I say- because it is from Margarate Atwood's The Year Of The Flood to describe the outside world)

The iPhone, which I consider evil, although I would love to have one, can also be a bad use of technology- all those apps cluttering up your time and brain with more useless things.

But what about the not-so-non-useless things?

"(CNN) -- Alone in the darkness beneath layers of rubble, Dan Woolley felt blood streaming from his head and leg.

Then he remembered -- he had an app for that."

Blood heartily dripping from his scalp, possibly compound fracture and gashed leg threatened Dan's life... and an iPhone app saved it- an app designed to tell you what to do in am emergency.

Considering how much I am bruising, breaking, and bashing myself open, I'm thinking an iPhone might be the route to go... especially with the rumors of AT&T losing exclusivity over it, bwhahahahahaa

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/01/24/haiti.survivor.phone.app/index.html?hpt=C1

Cultural Stomach Differences

A title that brings two points together

The first (Stomach): I just ate Chicago. In sandwich form. I bow at the feet of my Aunt and Cousin who sent me Giardinara.

The Second:Things I had to explain to our Euro counter parts for our Integrated Concepting class presentation yesterday

- The word "cohesive"
- The story of Goldie Locks and the Three Bears
- What a wing-man is

Inspiration

A Few Pictures

A few pics from the neighborhood I live in: St. Georg



This is of the Bell Tower a block from my apartment. I HATE this tower. It's bells ring at the most inconvenient times.



There are a ton of these weird, rusted, people sized pieces of metal. I'm not sure if they were placed there and THEN graffiti-ed, or there was a plan behind this.



I stuck my camera out my 5th story window and looked to the right. I haven't seen one screen in Hamburg so far, and this worries me because there is never any sun here, even when it's warm, so we wonder how high the suicide rate is. They should probably invest in some storm windows at least.

A Tribute to Limes

I have always loved limes. There. I said it. They go great rubbed on burritos and in my Whiskey/Coke.

Germany, oddly enough, has opened a new look on the lime.

Besides the fact that I just made a delicious drink out of a lime, thanks to the magnificent brain of my German room mate Martin, it's been a lime learning experience.

The drink, in case you are curious is:
1 full lime squeezed in a glass
some honey
hot water

The Story:
Recently we received a brief for the German drink LemonAid, seen at the bottom of the page.

The brief received was for a headlines class. Now, where the confusion begins: LemonAid is made with limes and brown sugar. I'm sure you see the problem the slower, but mathematical part of my brain is having.


So, I had an idea for what I thought would be an interesting campaign called "Fresh Thoughts". The concept behind it? We make lime juice but we'll call it lemonade. The headlines are then all "fresh thoughts"- just silly things. My first thought was getting rid of elevators so we can all work on our glutes. Not the most entertaining thing, but I walk up 5 flights of stairs every day due to lack of elevator, so it's something on my mind.

My teacher's response? "That's calling Germans stupid"

Um?

Turns out, anything made with a citrus fruit and sugar is called "lemonade" and lemonade is called something completely different.

What I learned:
Limes help with skin, body ordor (so if you notice that no one ever sits next to you- drink up), constipation, scurvy, weight loss, and many more

But my FAVORITE thing: If you ingest too many seeds, it acts as a poison. Think of the murder you could get away with. Killed by lime seeds? Diagnosis: Death by stupidity. Case closed, ship em' to the morgue.

Don't drop the soap.

<3 this campaign. But this one made me laugh the most

Tag: Dissolve your Problems

The Good, the Bad, and the World Without Hipsters

Today I had a few revelations on the Ubahn into school.

The bad news: I can no longer play 'Hipster or Homeless?' Why? because the answer is always 'Homeless'.

The good news: There is no such thing as a hipster in Germany, and from what I can see, in Europe.

The World Without Hipsters: I'm ok with returning to 2006.



Another note: Sandwiches with eggs in them: weird, and consequently, not delicious, but only 1.50EU.

A note I'm displeased with: No water fountains.

A really bad headline for LemonAid I wrote down anyway, because it makes me giggle: Fresher than the Prince.

Yes, that was a Will Smith reference. "I can rap with out swearing and be cool WOO HOOO!"

Yes, that was a Family Guy reference. I am depraved here.

You are a farting lawn

Today we learned bavarian swears

I dont remember how to say them in german/bavarian except the one that in bavarian means "shut your mouth" but in north german its "shut your c-word"

halt dei fotzen

the rest is (in english)

you are a farting lawn

you are a piss tile and you have been pissed on

you are the shit brush (you know...what you wipe the toilet bowl with)

you drunken goose (hard to hear because martin says gooz)

We're dipping carrots in fish, and may be eating rat.

So we made dinner tonight and it was an adventure.

First, we tried to just get simple carrots and dip. we thought it was some sort of dill dip, and it is... .with fish. Fish and Carrots anybody?

And... we've been eating putenfleich and putenbrust this whole time... and it looks like its chicken and turkey... but apparently those aren't the words for it.... so we are wondering what we've been eating, hoping it means chicken lunch meat and turkey lunchmeat... and that it's not some sort of rat

I have a breasts of a turkey

Today I pointed to a turkey sandwhich and said "Ich habe putenbrust" which in a direct translation would be broken german for "I have turkey" but I just found out I said it means "I have breasts of a turkey"

Greeeeaaaaat job. So proud.

I do not feel that bad, however, because when my room mate was little and learning english, he went to England and said "i want to be a steak".

Apparently, when you want something in german, you say something about "i want to become a" so when they learn english... they make the mistake of wanting to become a lot of foods.

Cross Walk lessons

So a few things about crossing the street in germany.

First, at the cross walks, they have traffic lights like in america- you know, the three up and down, only the top two each have a red person crossing the street (much like the orange cross walk light in america), and the bottom one is a green person. For some unknown reason, both the top two lights are lit when its not time to cross. When you can cross, there is only the one green man light on the bottom. I have illustrated this for you. Excuse my poor drawing skills.

So, I asked people why the two red men instead of just... one. No one knows, but it seems like the germans are yelling at me through symbols. They are saying HAALLLLLLLLLLTTTTTT!!!!!! And then, the two red men go away and they say in a nice quiet voice... okie, walk now :)

Very odd.

SECONDLY Germans are all about rules and about following them. When the two red men are yelling HALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!! You DO NOT cross the street. It doesn't matter if a bomb is going off behind you, if there is only one car on earth and it's in Tokyo, you DO NOT cross the street. You MUST wait for the green man or it is Jay-walking, and against the law. I can't believe how much time I have spent standing at a corner with no car in sight, just standing, waiting for the light to say 'okie, walk now :) " Probably 5 hours in the 3 days I've been here. But perhaps that's an exaggerations. Though I spose less pedestrians are hit by cars and lawsuit lawyers probably don't make as much money.

Germans REALLY love David Hasslhoff

'Nuff said. Going to base all my concepts around him. Straight A's.

Germany Day 1 Part 2- S.L.U.T. s, wine, and chicken dildos

So, it's 5pm "my" time, 10am Chi time. Spent the day with my room mate from Scotland, Pauline, who is going to MAS Euro as well, and Christie, who came here with no place to live- although she just found one to move into tomorrow. We spent the day walking around. The first thing we did was buy three bottles of wine, which we are now drinking.

There are 120 steps up to my apartment. Yes, I counted. Like I said before, Germans do not care about being handicap accessible. It was fun lugging two huge bags, a duffle and a backpack up. Luckily Markus was here to help and didn't mind taking several breaks. Then I helped Christie lug her bags up here. We took many, many more breaks.

Went and got some Doners that everybody told us to get- it's turkish food, kinda like a turkish burrito. The guy spoke very little english, thought we were funny, gave us free tea and taught us German for snow- shnell, and ice- ice.

We realized if we read german out loud, it sounds like english, so as we walked around we read things like the little cartoon bubbles they have on trash cans to each other. People must have thought we were weird reading aloud to one another, but we're americans. we're super cool (not).

Right now we have no food because grocery stores and everything else seem to all be closed on sundays. We did however manage to get the wine, and noticed that every single sex shop is open. We thought to ask if maybe they had dildos made of chicken, but don't know the word for chicken and decided to move on. So we have no food, but wine, and my mother suggested to get edible underwear.

Right by our apartment is a place called...something. But under it is the word S.L.U.T. It's a club with good drink prices, and a new porn showing tomorrow. It is across the streeet from a children's park.

School starts at noon tomorrow. Hopefully we'll find our way, find food, and not be hung over.

Over and Out Sour Kraut

The Journey Begins. DUN DUN dunnnnnn

My journey starts off at O’Hare, where I am unknowingly looking at the ticket of my connecting flight and trying to find my way to Gate A- which doesn’t exist. You wonder how terrorists get in? I showed the lady at security the wrong ticket and i still got by.

After wandering, I figure out my gate and head to the opposite side of the airport, where I immediately meet my travel companion David Riley, who teaches me things in German to piss them off. I like him instantly and am pleased when he is seated in front of me next to a 27 year JAG girl who wonders how old I am and bores me with how 918 people applied for the JAG internship when she was in law school, and only 112 of them got it. She had three job offers from the CIA and one from the FBI so I make sure to be pleasant and pretend to listen.

My first view of Germany was of a plane wing. Because that was all I could see until I craned my neck to see the glittering lights out the window behind me. Even then, I could have been circling Chicago for eight and a half hours, because here, it was 6:15am, 11:15pm Chicago time. At this point I’d like to give a shout out to my parents and their wonderful bottle of sleeping pills, which allowed me to sleep 8 hours out of the 8.5 hour flight, leaving the JAG lawyer next to me jealous as she struggled to sleep 2 through the loud cries of several babies. Now I would like to thank the maker of these wonderful pills, as I was dead to the world.

About 6 hours into the flight I awoke with a start, the right wing had somehow been completely destroyed. We took a slow right turn downward, and began a slow spiraling decent to the ocean. I panicked, wondering what the survival rate was, decided I was going to die, but grabbed the air mask that had dropped in front of me and wondered if there were rafts. I awoke with a start in my seat, looked around and realized it was a dream. Then the captain came over the intercom, told us there was a problem with the wing and we were going to start descending at rapid rate and stay calm. I thought “Jesus”, and then for a second time awoke, because I’d be dreaming in a dream. When I awoke for real, there was a bunch of food stuffed in the pocket in front of me, and I thought, yay for the JAG girl from Denver for getting me breakfast.

When I stepped off the plane, I noted that my dad was right, and the German’s don’t exactly stay up to date with handicap policy. I looked at the man and his cane next to me as he stared in defeat, threw my baggage over my shoulder and trudged up a large set of stairs.

Before I left, half the people who had traveled abroad in other countries told me I should really get a Visa. Grim told me no, that was not necessary. As I walked up to show my passport I wondered if I should get all my other paperwork, and prayed they would let me in the country with just my letter from school and my feeble map for the cab driver. I’d like to let you know at this point, that I have yet to make it to my apartment, so I have no idea whether or not the address is correct or if anyone will even be home.

Surprisingly, I’ve been asked more questions about what I’m doing when I go to Canada. I walked right through customs. Apparently the Germans don’t care why you are entering the country, or what your plans are there, but they do have a lot of men standing around with large, large, large guns- so at the very least I’m going to behave until I get out of the airport.

Also, for anyone traveling to a foreign country in the future, pack your external hard drive in your checked baggage. IT LOOKS LIKE A BOMB. Try to explain “hard drive” in English. It makes no sense when you say ‘it’s part of my laptop” when you have to go through security again.

At this point I say goodbye to my new American friends- the JAG lawyer who brags too much, and David Riley, the wonderfully nice and entertaining although not to bright army boy headed to southern Germany and suggested I visit his base and wandered off to my new gate, where I am now seated.