Savoring my birthday

Every birthday seems to have its own special flavor. When I was 16, the flavor was coconut rum by a campfire in Pender Harbour. At 19 it was roasted chicken and mash potatoes in Boston after a performance by the Blue Man Group. When I was 21 it was my first taste of homemade tagliatelle at a tiny Italian restaurant in Quetzaltenago, Guatemala. Upon turning 24 it was the taste of potluck on West 7th ave in Vancouver (mixed with the laughter of being on the receiving end of the infamous "Cat Song Prank"). At 25 it was cold zarasoba (buckwheat noodles) with tamari and green onions from the corner store in Tokyo. When I turned 27 it was the cold Blanche de Chambly on tap and world cup soccer in Montreal. At 29 it was the taste of brunch lovingly made by my friends and my roommate Ali. At 30 there was blueberry cheesecake, and a month long hunt for the 30 things a girl needs in life, ending up in the Yukon eating caribou and drinking Yukon Gold. At 32 the taste is definitively smokey, strong, blackened, grilled, slow-cooked, sizzling... mmmmm... three little letters to describe the year ahead? BBQ. You're invited.

Thanks to all the awesome people who chipped in for this amazing gift! And to those who provided the wheels, the thoughtfulness behind the gift, and the eagerness to go shopping at the butchers. xoxoxo

Progress

A math museum is a funny place to find yourself on a sunny day, but in Bonn the decision to spend your afternoon in the presence of adding machines has a special logic. Bonn is the museum capital of Germany, which itself has the reputation for knowing how to organize and order things, and the museums and galleries I’ve been to in Germany do a fantastic job of curating and exhibiting almost anything you can imagine.

Starting on the 4th floor of an architecturally outstanding building, I found myself diving into the history of Mesopotamian clay tablets, jade Chinese abaci, and wooden Japanese soroban. Using any one of these early rendering devices required more skill than I had first thought, but I wanted to prove to myself that I am not a product of convenient technology and could, if asked to, calculate without a calculator. By the time I reached the 3rd floor (the exhibit descends) I was fascinated by what I imagined was my new favourite combination of things- adding machines and geometric art from the 1930’s. I could see myself dazzling friends at dinner with my knowledge of how the ‘ten’s carry’ came about in the 17th Century, how the growth in interest in adding machine technology reached a fevered pitch in the 1920s in North America just before the stock market crash and how Italians were the masters of creating flow in geometric form by using the right array of colour.

An hour later I found myself on the first floor, punching numbers into a 20th century adding machine and marveling how, with only 5 minutes of instructions, I could easily multiply 43 by 1145. Then it hit me- I hadn’t seen a device between ancient Mesopotamia and New York in the 1920s that allowed me to do more than basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. In the 800 years of tinkering with math machines, the innovations hadn’t really changed how much I had to use my brain- I still had to understand math. But in the last 80 years math machines went electric, found silicon, became early computers, and then the complex internal logic of the thing I’m typing on now. The Philosopher/Mathmaticians Alfred North Whitehead once said, “Fundamental progress has to do with the reinterpretation of basic ideas” and as I googled that quote on my smart phone in the exhibit on early computers, I marveled that the evolution from abacus to computer had been such a dull trajectory for so long, only to become the catharsis for our modern age.

Coming and going

I arrived back in Bonn in shirt sleeves and panting from the weight of missed hours and the burden of bad packing. 6 weeks of travel brought me full circle around the world and a halfway again- only to be yanked back towards the dullness of a deciduous forest in winter and a swollen, menacing river. The waterfront of the Rhine was a series of lampposts jutting out of the murky brown, marking the garrisoned lines that the river had marched effortlessly past. The cradle built to carry the river to the sea was broken. The violence of this act was itself submerged beneath the gentle lapping of the river’s knife-edge on sodden grass and the backs of park benches. I wanted the river to win more ground just to see how the built landscape of the city would react. But just a silent as it came; the flood receded back into its bed like a shadow shirking the light of the sun.

Bonn is boring today

I know I've been crap at posting things lately and I'm still not really writing anything now. I got my wallet stolen yesterday and I'm bummed out. But to keep the faithful interested, here are a few things I found on the internet. enjoy!

Art of Luke Cheuh, especially this one

Bizarre and wonderful Les Rita Mitsouko

eschew the predictable pumpkin jack-o-lantern

Hokusai in plastic- an poignant statement on the state of the oceans (click through the slide show). The same amount of plastic it took to create this piece is dumped into the ocean every hour.

never forget the periodic table of elements

Drunk History

Lady Gaga in plaid shorts and a polo shirt

and if by now you are still clicking through these links: superpoop

I've been playing with some of my images from past trips to Haida Gwaii, Yukon, Japan, and other places, creating whimsical re-rememberings of places that are near to my heart.

a bike ride

I ride my bike along the Rhine to work everyday. The route is like the sea wall except instead of an ocean there is a big, fast flowing river snaking along beside you. The path is leafy green and flat. The river boats fight the current upstream with bellies lying low to the water and heavy with commodity. The Rhine is a thoroughfare for boats and bikers, who can both enjoy about 650km of navigation in and along its watery path from Switzerland to Rotterdam's maze at the mouth of the Rhine and the edge of the North Sea.

I bike against the current in the morning, feeling that endless and massive flow of water working against me, trying to turn me around and take me with it. All that water, every second, every curl and eddy, is constantly leaving that river. Nothing that defines the river is ever contained in it for very long. Every answer a river whispers to you is a question contained in narrow parentheses, scarring the landscape with meandering meanings that slack and slick and disappear. This is different than living on the edge of the Pacific, which will out outlive us all by countless millennia, perched between our knowing and the unreachable horizon, pooling energy into a wordless om.

In the evening I flow with the river, handsfree on my bike and something really good on my ipod. Rain or shine the joggers jog, the river rolls us all along back into downtown Bonn and tips me out near the bridge, back into the limits of blocks and buildings and grocery stores already packing in their wares for the evening. I weave through town on streets seemingly too narrow to hold the traffic they contain. At the central station I duck under train tracks that rattle with the expresses and regionals clanking progress towards tightly timed stops. When I emerge from the underpass the path is a long expanse of green hemmed in with apartment blocks elegantly attired in chiseled garlands and stony cherubs. This is the Poppelsdorfer: a line of green grass stretching from the university to the east all the way to the buttery yellow western palace. Halfway along this long narrow park Baumschulallee cuts through with a sudden expanse of tired pavement. Just off this corner is my apartment building. I can see the entry way where I imagine I will shortly park my bike and climb the flights of stairs to my house. But I have been stuck between the fleeting freedom of this new river and my desire for the heavy permanence of the Pacific all day and I'm having a hard time figuring out where home is. So I keep riding around, letting my bike ride stretch further and further into the evening until I am back beside the Rhine watching it slide past me in dark slicks of curled water.

Loving the infographics...

My new campaign... something really near and dear. Please help!

Help fight homesickness! Send a letter/drawing/poem/favorite joke/etc to:

Angeline Gough
Apt. 9, Baumschulallee 2, Bonn, Germany 53115

All donations graciously accepted. You CAN make a difference.

Music festival fail

I admit to having a nasty case of FOMO that keeps flaring up. It give me itchy feet and fidgety hands. I get anxious and easily irritated. I can't focus and enjoy what is happening in front of me because I'm always wondering what else is going on. FOMO, for the uninitiated, means Fear Of Missing Out.

Imagine you are at some party and everyone is having a good time... except you. YOU said you'd be at another party a half an hour ago and you can't help wondering 1) what that other party is like 2) if, when you leave this party, something great will happen that you will miss 3) why you said you'd go to this party, and that party, and then meet a friend at that other party at 12.

Or maybe...

You are at a show and your friend texts you to go to an party after the show, but you are tired because you've been out too much and work is stressing you out and you really need some sleep. So you decide not to go. Later you either A) lie in bed wondering if the party was good B) get a text saying "where you at????" when you are already in bed and actually think about getting dressed and going downtown again or C) wake up the next day with red-rimmed eyes, deep bags, and stinky hair and wonder why you didn't just go home when you had the chance.

If you are nodding you head to any of the above, you may have FOMO. Don't worry, I think its like a worldwide phenomenon these days. Who can avoid it? We're a dialed in, notified, up-to-date, and to-the-minute culture. I mean, I can get your 50-word blargh about what you ate for breakfast automatically sent to me on my mobile phone seconds after you finish stuffing your face. Is it possible to be too dialed-in? ... to the point that we can't be satisfied with our present situation when the greener grass is always just a tweet away?

Despite the itchiness, anxiety, and occasional sleep deprivation, I think the answer is NO.

Case in point: I decide to chill out for a week. Take it slow. Let my body adjust to my new surroundings in Germany and just forget about trying to see what the world is up to. And what happens? I miss the best frickin' concert I will probably see in Germany this year: http://www.haldern-pop.de/de/festival/programm/
Beach house, Yeasayer, The Tallest Man on Earth, The National, Jose Gonzalez, The Low Anthem, Beirut and more... all at a 7500 person outdoor festival in the middle of the German countryside. erp.

I will never deny my FOMO again. It only gets worse when you find out that what you missed out on was really, really awesome.

Europe's biggest flea market

This weekend! be there or be square...
Antiques, art, deadwood and second-hand articles - spread out over a length of 4 kilometers in the magnificent ambiance of the Rheinaue Park.
YES!

Too legit to quit

Last week I became a bonefide expat again. I finally got my visa and work permit and became a member of the large and diverse expatriate community in Bonn. It is pathetic how satisfying it is to become legitimate in the eyes of a government bureaucracy and yet when I finally jumped through the last hoop, I felt more at home here- like I could simply flash my visa and work permit around at the bar and say, "See?! I'm one of you now!" It is also not lost on me that to bask too long in the light of legitimate employment in a foreign country is to lose sight of a key element of my presence here- If I leave this job, I am out of the country. kaput. My existence here is defined by the rules of my work permit, which gives me a week to get out of the country once my job is over. Legitimate as I am, with one wrong turn I could lose job and legal status here quite quickly. Thus I am, as a wise man once said, "too legit to quit".

Losing my religion

Just finished my first week of work. I'm a little drunk and a lot tired. Spent the evening with all the ladies from the office. Collectively we speak German, Swedish, Portuguese, Spanish, English, Hindi, French, Japanese and a Zambian language that I do not know (there are 85 languages spoken in Zambia...). We ate a beautiful Portuguese meal and drank caipirinhas and what I can say about all that language exchange is that puns of a sexual nature work across language barriers. We laughed a lot.

I needed it. After all, under the banner of the German bureaucracy and in the eyes of God, I denounced religion to save 30 euro/month.

It started on Wednesday. I met up with my good friend Tony Kelly (oh some of you know him as Tony-no-eyes) at the Hauptbahnhof in Bonn (the central train station) sweaty and listless after a mad dash home from work to grab a change of clothes for a quick trip to Dusseldorf. We had tickets for a concert that I had assumed included a German brass band playing some kind of jazzy samba music. They were called LaBrassBanda. We met my good friend Kate (tony's better half) at the Zakk: Zentrum for Aktion, kultur, and kommunikation (I f#*ing love the use of 'k' in this language) just before the band got underway. In short time I had a weitzen (wheat beer from D'Dorf) in hand and was staring out a crowd of people far too large for any stickler fire inspector to allow in such a small space. My samba-jazz brass band stepped on stage in lederhosen and t-shirts and sported a trombone, a tiny wee trumpet, and a huge tuba. The brass section was followed by a bass guitar and a drummer. The crowd was worked in a decidely un-jazzy frenzy and I started to reconsider what I was about to experience. Needless to say, by the end of the night I was a sweaty mess at the front of the stage head banging and failing my drunken limbs to a ska-reggae-bavarian fusion covering sweet hits from the 90s like "Rhythm is a Dancer"... for something near and dear, check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpYKD75zlkY&feature=related.

The train I needed to take was at 6:50am the following morning so naturally Tony, Kate and I stayed up drinking whiskey until 2 am. I set three alarms for 6 am. When I awoke I found kate, future patron saint of breakfasts (once I file the paperwork with the Pope), making french toast in the kitchen. This was the fuel I needed to get back to Bonn, 1 tram and an hour-long train away, in time for my 8:50am appointment at the Stadthaus (city hall) to get registered in this country. I realized once I boarded the train that I was still drunk; which was not a promising epiphany early on a Thursday morning. When I got home I realized that my passport was at work. 2 more trains later I had my passport and was on my way to my appointment. one more train later I was totally lost south of the city. two trains later I was back where I started. One train later I was an hour late to meet the colleague who had graciously offered to join me at city hall and translate my paperwork. She was not there. This was when things got metaphysical. I did my registration anyway. They asked if I was protestant or catholic... and I went protestant cause my lingering inebriation had me thinking that a harder work ethic was preferable to drowning in guilt. I didn't know i could tell them I was a nihilist or a dinosaur or a movementarian...

2 more trains later I got back to work and fought the urge to sleep at my desk. Who does that in their first week of work? 15 minutes later I awoke to find the head of administration in my office. She asked me if I had done my registration. check. She asked me if i had a tax card. no idea what that was. She asked me if I had told them i had no religion. blank again.

It seems that if you claim a religion in Germany, they tax you a tithe for that church and I surreptitiously agreed to give the protestant faith 30 of my hard earned euros per month for cathedral upkeep and general soul-saving. I had to right this wrong. The head of admin told me it may be too late, but I went back to the stadthaus the next morning to lose my newly claimed religion.

When I got there i waited for an hour to speak to someone and then the woman at the counter didn't speak English. She found someone to give a rough translation. The message was basically that I could reverse my religious commitments (in the sober light of Friday) but they would need it writing. Thus, on Friday, August 6th, 2010, at 9:15am in Bonn, Germany, in a pallid and dimly-lit cubicle, at the behest of the German Bureacracy, I renounced, in writing, my freshly claimed religious fervor with the words "I have no religion".

Writing such a statement then signing, dating and surrendering it on a piece of A4 paper to a national government officer is unnerving. The last verse of "American Pie" shot through my head (satan laughing with delight the day the music died) and I felt I had upset the tapestry of non-committal, middle-class religious neutrality that I never knew I had fostered so deeply. So I am embracing my new nihilism as a inevitable part of my German experience. The act of denouncing God just to get a meager tax break is perhaps one of my most profound moments of capitalistic realism- I just wish I'd had the pictorial shorthand of advertising to give the statement real punch.

Followship Award

The Angebot Blog Followship Award goes to Ariel-Ann! Congrats at being the only person who is willing to admit that they are following this blog. I know you loved the emails from Japan and I will do my best to distill the weird and wonderful from Germany as well.

Dr. Best

I bought a toothbrush today called "Dr.Best". I'm not sure who the German marketing wunderkind was who decided on this but it is perhaps the most brilliant branding of a toothbrush I have come across. First, there is the collegial, wise, and explicitly emphatic "Dr", which just begs for serious consideration of any and all of the toothbrush's amazing design innovations (think thumb grip, flex, and four different lengths of bristle) and then add "best" and any and all naysayers and doubting thomases are immediately put in their place. Shazaam.

On a completely different wavelength I have two observations about the U-Bahn (subway) in Bonn:

1. The perfect music for your early morning commute: Miike Snow's "Animals"

2. N'er-do-wells and hooligans hang out by the train platform. This morning they each had a watermelon in a shopping bag.

Finally, two things to look out for in Bonn in August:

1. Christ (an upscale german leather goods store coming soon to Munsterplatz). Christ is coming!

2. Foreigner on their "Can't Slow Down" tour- August 27th on the Bonn Summer stage. Can't slow down tour???? Is this a bad reference to a certain Keanu Reeves/ Sandra Bullock movie?... if their partying goes below a certain threshold their careers will explode? Or are they mildly apologetic... like two virgins who'd like to make the moment last longer, if only they could?

Things that Bonn is famous for (in no particular order)

Things that Bonn is famous for (in no particular order)

gummy bears (est. 1922)
Birthdplace of Beethoven, Bonn's most beloved son
Been a city for 2000 years (bit of history round the place)
Old capital of West Germany
Home of the world dance championships, the German equine championships, and the annual foil fencing world cup - which means that the Bonn equivalent of the EGOT* is the EFFD. I wonder how many people have been EFFD in Bonn? Probably not very many...

*EGOT= Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony (thank you 30Rock)

Things I have seen in Bonn already:

Harajuku girls (Germans... so wasn't sure if they were harajuku or just up to some Bavarian badassry, but the panda eyes and hello kitty accessories confirmed their allegiance to at least Gwen Stefani)
polite punk rockers with green mohawks
sauerkraut on everything

the angebot

If google translate is to be trusted, and I will leave this for careful consideration for you dear reader, then angebot is a German noun meaning any and all of the following:

1. offer
2. supply
3. range
4. tender
5. bid
6. quote
7. proposal
8. invitation
9. estimate
10. proffer

(It also has a less formal usage as my robotic alter ego, but more on that later...)

For now, this angebot is an offer, a proposal, and an invitation for you to join me as often as you like in my (mis-) adventures in Europe over the course of the foreseeable future until such time as I no longer blog, you no longer read, or we both get bored. Let's see where this goes...