A long week

Sorry for the infrequent blogging this week, but I have a good excuse: I am employed! Yes, after two weeks of filling out too many job applications, and making too many phone calls in my Germanish (German-English), I have now found gainful employment as an English teacher in a sprachschule in the 'Furt. The best part is that the job is only 25 hours per week, thus I can continue my German studies. But I'm not in the clear yet. I have to apply for my Visa. My new boss said that this shouldn't be a problem as long as I remember to bring the right papers and biometric photos when I meet the authorities on Tuesday. Biometric photos, by the way, are super bad ass. You have to stand against a white background, you have to have your ears and the top of your head visible, and you CANNOT smile. When I do those things (I've been practicing in the mirror) I look astonishingly like David Bowie. It won't be pretty.

Besides getting a job, and seeing that concert, I went to Rimbach this week. Dinner with E's former colleagues was great, but everyone spoke German, so I did a lot of nodding and 2-second delay laughing at jokes. Rimbach is on the famed Bergstrasse (Mountain Street) of Germany. It's the scenic route that 18th century literati like Goethe took to Italy, and it really is more fairy-tale like than Bavaria. We took the regional bahn, which is one of my favorite things to do here. The Hauptbanhof in Frankfurt is a gorgeous building and I love how the skyline comes into view as we rear into the station. It feels both perfectly modern and completely old-fashioned at the same time, which I guess is apropos of Germany.

Tonight I am going to make a nice curry, lentil, potato, stew-thing: another recipe from Bittman's book. The weather here is wet and chilly, so something hot and contained in one bowl is required for dinner. Tomorrow I am going on my first-ever European trip to... IKEA! I can't wait! I hope it's exactly like the one near the MOA, like with the same set-up and everything so it will feel like some Swedish-designed parallel universe. I have a perverse love for these parallel universes that occur thanks to globalization. A perfect example is the Starbuck's I visited this afternoon. Beige and green overstuffed chairs? Check. Vanilla spelling with an "a"? Check. Neko Case on the PA? Check. Eerie, I felt like my old eighth grade teacher could have walked in at any minute.