The Blogs Collide: Visit To Munich and Caiomhe's Birthday

It's been quite a week for me. This past weekend I caught the train down to Munich to visit with my old house mates. Most of them are doing at least a master if not a doctorate so I was pleased to hear that they would all be there for at least another year, and some for a few more. It was an especially surreal visit. I got in very late on Friday night when most had gone to bed, so I did likewise and on Saturday morning it was Déjà vu all over again. As I saw everyone again for the first time in three years it suddenly felt like I had just left a week ago. Yes things have changed a bit, the kitchen had been remodeled with new cabinets, stoves, and refrigerators; the house looked better as my friends had gained more clout over the years to enforce stricter rules on the upkeep of the building, and the common room was spruced up with some new paint, as well as a donated TV and couches. Nonetheless, it seemed like I was suddenly re-immersed into the past as though with a time machine, because most importantly of all, the people hadn't changed a bit. I had forgotten how much of a family Haus 5A in the Studentenstadt is, and they hadn't forgotten me. My requests to pay for anything or wash a dish were summarily and routinely denied. I was reminded continually about how every year another American came and went, but none had been as fun or involved as myself, although this year a worthy heir to my throne had finally come, a lad named Tom from a small town outside of Chicago who I got a chance to make friends with. Going into my old room, where I had lived for a year that was perhaps the best in my life, was surreal. In this room I had struggled over grammar till I wanted to pull my hair out, laughed over beers with friends so hard that I cried, grieved for my father in the most lonesome moments I ever knew, and found even greater strength and independence than I thought I possessed. In this room I learned that I could hack it living in a foreign land and a foreign tongue. 


Unfortunately it rained the whole time I was in Munich, which couldn't have been more than 36 hours. That just meant more quality time cooped up in the house with my friends, preparing for the celebration I coincidentally was in town for. "Neueinzügleressen" roughly translates to "newcomer's meal" and is something done every year in our house that is supposed to get new people in the house more socially involved; it is essentially a potluck dinner of dishes from all the countries represented in the house. When I was there I made my great-grandmother's beef stew, "Rindertopf" in German, which people still remembered when I went back this year. It is truly a feast, and the huge amounts of food people eat is only made possible by the equally large portions of alcohol consumed. The Germans even have certain varieties of schnapps called "Digestiv" that are specifically distilled to aid in digestion to help one not feel quite so full after a heavy meal, also allowing one to make more room for seconds and thirds. But in general, alcohol helps break down fat, and there was a whole lot of fat to be broken down. We even had some homemade schnapps, the equivalent of German moonshine, smooth to drink but you could light your breathe on fire after taking a shot of it. The women kept complaining about how all the dishes people chose to make ended up being either starch or meat, while the men celebrated this same fact. Perhaps that is why most of the people affected by the recent EHEC scare (E Coli in vegetables as mentioned in previous posts) were female. Once the drinks got flowing, I was able to get our resident Bavarians to break out the accordion and harmonica and play some of the tunes that were the background music to my year in München. The whole experience was so heartwarming that on the long train ride back, I began to seriously consider going back there for my master's. 

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This week we had the pleasure of celebrating Caiomhe's 1st birthday! We had a wonderful little party with about a half dozen kids and their parents in attendance. I will say that I was nearly blinded when a balloon exploded half way through inflation; in that split second, I pictured myself in a dive-bar sitting next to a one legged man with a patch over my eye. 
"How did you lose your leg?"
"Rocket propelled grenade, Fallujah." 
"How did you lose your eye?"
"Blowing up a balloon for a little girl's birthday party, Berlin."

If you're going to lose a major appendage, you better damn well have a good story, is the point I guess I'm trying to make, if there is a point to be made at all from that tangent. Anyway, we broke out the streamers, balloons and cake for the little one. She and her baby friends got to "play," which at that age often consists of crawling all over one another sticking their hands in each others' mouths, in a most adorable way, transmitting various childhood illnesses that I will invariably contract because the cold strains here are slightly different from the ones I've already built up an immunity to in the States. Nonetheless, I was pleasantly surprised by how civilly everyone played, from the babies to the toddlers that were her brother's friends. One of them in attendance was Tilly/ie, a very cute little girl from around the corner who occasionally steals kisses from Daire at the park, and I was lucky enough to get them to pose for a picture.