A few things caught my attention today. First was the realization of the utter and amazing versatility of English grammar. You can literally throw around the subject, object and verb of a sentence like dice, and in most situations still come out with the same meaning as before. As a writer of poetry, short fiction and lover of the literary universe, "this I love."
Much to my chagrin and embarrassment, I learned today in class that German is strictly not so. The verb must ALWAYS follow the subject. You cannot say, for example; "I, in order to become fluent, will speak only German from this day on." Arguably, that isn't great English either, at least not spoken English. But this sort of grammatically awkward phrasing still has a home in the literary word, aber NICHT. AUF. DEUTSCH. To put it simply, I think they're wrong. But, whatever...
In other news I absolutely love/hate the food I have encountered while here. What I mean to say is that I have discovered no foods towards which I am ambivalent, rather only ones which I have absolutely loved or completely detested. On the winning side there have been döner kebabs (a Turkish fast food/bread wrap made of entirely German ingredients (processed beef, red cabbage, light mayonase (which Germans LOVE), lettuce and cucumber), knacker wurst (a very salty and tender sausage, not processed to the degree of American hot dogs or liver wurst) and of course blutwurst, my all time favorite sausage (made from fat, tender cartilage and congealed blood; yummy!)
On the losing side we have Turkish bread boats (aka Turkish pizza), which I dislike because it has simply far too much oil and grease; you feel it in your stomach for hours, your burps taste like it each time and in the end it's not always pleasant either. Also I have found that Germans seem to like (and I very much do not) plastic wrapped fruit and vegetables, as opposed to cellophane wrapping which we use so often in the US. I've tried both bananas and tomatoes of this fashion and they have been tasteless, stiff to the touch, and dry; blech.
Today I bought a bunch of very delicious and fresh tomatoes, plumbs and mangos from the Turkish street market. While there I bought a very cool fountain pen and was (I'm still not sure if I made the mistake or he did) swindled 1,50 euro on it. I also bought some short sport socks, always handy. Much to my surprise I found a booth selling antique, spring wound watches in spherical crystal casing (basically identical to the one I bought in Ohio while visiting my family). It was to my great disappointment that I learned they were being sold for 22-24 euro a piece, where I had paid over $100 dollars for mine in the US.
It is one thing to be mugged or even pick-pocketed, but it is an other thing entirely to feel retroactively swindled, especially so close to home and at such a high price.
I'll just have to make up for it with a great purchase in the future. I look forward to it. :-)
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