| December 6, 2004 - A Streetcar Named Your Mama |
| Dear Friends, I'm back from my whirlwind vacation to Germany! And what a great time I had! Now, I'm sure you'll all remember that I said I was going to go see a production of "A Streetcar Named Desire", well, I did. And it was pretty good; not necessarily the best production of anything I've ever seen (JOHNNYLEEN has, after all, attended a Broadway play), but definitely not the worst either, which has to have been a rural production of an Agatha Christie mystery held in a school cafeteria. Now, for "Streetcar", I had a second row seat and was so close to the stage that I could see spit flying from the actors' mouths as they raged in that way that only Tennessee Williams can so accurately capture. Imagine my surprise the next day when I opened up the Rhein-Pfalz newspaper and saw the guy who played Stanley Kowalski staring back at me. He and two other performers had won awards for their work in various plays and concerts at the Pfalz Theater. I also attended a professional soccer game, which was totally cool. You wouldn't believe the way people were screaming and singing and waving flags and banging drums. Kaiserslautern won 3 to 0 against Freiburg and the crowd erupted. Apparently, the Kaiserslautern team has been pretty weak this year, so everyone felt it was about time that they got a stick on. I discovered something interesting though; I never realized that whistling at a sports event in Germany is a sign of displeasure. Whenever the referee called a foul against a Kaiserslautern team member, the crowd whistled rather than booed. It was great fun and I even later found a Kaiserslautern sports scarf on the sidewalk, so I got a free memento! Now, this is wild, I attended a Ph.D. defense while I was there! A friend of Mannfred's was defending his Ph.D. project, which had something to do with computer modelling for the management of a building's environment. It was all very complicated and afterwards the professors asked bunches of questions. Well, that's all well and good, the main point is that the candidate was awarded his Ph.D. and his wife, who is from the Philippines, threw him a party afterwards which was flowing with beer, champagne, and Philippino food. While I was in Big Deutschland, I also saw "Der Polarexpress" and "Harry Potter und der Gefangene von Azkaban". Delightful! I also watched a two-part miniseries on "Das Nibelungenlied" which I will leave up to you to do research on to see what it's all about. Then on my very last night there, Mannfred and Getrude had a raclette party. A raclette is a type of tabletop grill that you cook meats on. And underneath it you put little trays of vegetables and cheese to heat them up. It was yummy. But I have to tell you about something funny that happened. Gertrude passed around a bowl of whole boiled potatoes. Each guest picked out a potato and then proceeded to peel it with a knife, holding it like an apple! I wanted to laugh since I had never seen anything like that, but, as JOHNNYLEEN always says, "When in Rome, do as the Romans." So I picked up my tatie and peeled it with the best of them. I also got to play with Mannfred and Gertrude's new baby, Andreas. He was just such a sweetie-pie. But what a poop machine! I had forgotten how often infants seem to go! And he was always quite obvious about it, too, grunting and looking really big-eyed. Now, in an earlier paragraph I mentioned once going to a school cafeteria to see a play based on an Agatha Christie mystery. I reluctantly went and only then because one of its "stars" kept egging me on to come and I just wanted her to shut up. But after it was over, a few of us went to the cast party. What a pretentious lot! At one point some chickie-baby there shrieked, "Oh my bustiere!" And everyone turned to see that her bustiere had fallen off and she was giggling like a school girl as she tried to quickly cover up her meager offerings. Honestly, I don't know why she even needed a bustiere; a funnel would have done just as well! If that wasn't enough, while pretending to be all hoity-toity, they served us icky Gallo wine. One of the few times I've ever felt ill was after drinking Gallo and I think I could easily pick it out in a taste test, the memory of it is that bad. So I'm back in the dreary ol' Big City, facing hateful ol' work again. But 'tis the season of Christmas parties so I have a few of them to look forward to. And then of course it will be 2005, no doubt another year of fantabulosity for JOHNNYLEEN! Next entry Previous entry Go to diary entries Go back home |