Fame and Grutzwurst

I'm famous! I'm famous! OK-- maybe not today but perhaps next week-- well, maybe.

Let me explain-- Die Zeit, a German newspaper, was interested in doing an article for its Sunday magazine on the Leucorea. That's the institute that se go to every day for school. It's the building that hosts all those foreign exchange programs-- exchange programs and conferences like the Health care convention I might have mentioned last week. So, we just happened to be here and I just happen to live around the corner and they just happen to be too busy to go too far and so Frau Meissner and I were photographed and interviewed. Then a photographer from Berlin went with us to the house and he photographed us pretending to drink tea and talk, as we really do every night. I was afraid I'd be nervous, but they were really nice and I managed to prattle on for a while without trouble and I'm assumeing they will fix my grammar mistakes if they quote me. Actually, my luck I will end up on the cutting room floor or it will turn out the way it did when Stave Watson interviewed me about digital TV-- after a half hour conversation, my single recognition was "I'm very confused," said Katie Reimers of East Aurora. So, we'll see. At least I would love my school name to be mentioned so I could get browny points with my superintendent. Die Zeit is no small town paper, I should mention-- It's like being in the New York Times. Who knows. It comes out the day before we go. I'll probably get a bad picture and a terrible out-of-context quote and can be laughed at on both sides of the Atlantic. (Oh, and in case you were wondering, OF COURSE I shared my camera problems with the photographer! Silly question.)

So, what else is going on? Yesterday I went to a student performance of a Bach Oratorio (Der Triumph der Zeit, Mary, in case you know it-- I didn't) Anyway, it was very intimate-- in the Lucorea with a small orchestra and the performers. It was kind of the usual modern opera mix-- women in tuxedos mixed in with a man in a lab coat and a few ladies in vaguely Victorian dress. It was an allegory in which an Japanese women who represented time looked alternatively pissed off and distressed while being harangued by the man in the lab coat representing "Time". I was not really drawn in by the music and considered ducking out during intermission. I was rewarded, though, at the end by a really beautiful, soaring aria at the end. I had to close my eyes, though, because I was distracted by the figures on stage-- another Japenese singer in tights with a glittering top hat and cane who rolled around during the aria on a set bed with another singer dressed in a tuxedo.

I've been eating good food-- fresh garden produce with Frau Meissner and more hot German food in the cafeteria. Yesterday one of the teachers had a birthday and so there were a lot of pastries and cakes. But, lest you think that everything is Torten und Kuchen hear, let me share yesterday's cafeteria meal – Grutzwurst, Rotkohl und Sauerkraut. Grutzwurst is a mix of blood and breadcrumbs and sausage crumbles, I guess-- as far as I can understand. The mix was actually not bad, if one didn't ruminate too long on the ingredients. Nate, a fellow teacher, described it as "Blood mixed together with cream of wheat." So ist es.