Quote of the week.

That headline looks like it was written in German by a Chilean, and translated to English by a German.

-Ricardo

I'm just happy he wasn't talking about something I wrote.

The girl who loves potatoes.

A week ago I went out with Lanky Girl. We talked about many things, including her boyfriend, and the fact that she's loved three men in her life, all named Thomas. So not only is she currently in a relationship, but she's unavailable on this whole other cosmic level as well.

Still, we had a very nice time. We ate asian food; she had noodles, I had sushi. She shared her broccoli with me. We created charts of our lives with a pen and paper. I think we'll meet again, maybe at a restaurant called the Kartoffelhaus (kartoffel = potato). We walked past it, and I made some joke about how I guess everything there is made out of potatoes, which is kinda funny from my Californian, not-so-many-potatoes upbringing. And she told me that she LOVES LOVES LOVES potatoes, and how they're her favorite food, and mom served potatoes with every meal. So that'll be fun.

Fun in German

Last week a bunch of us went to a bar in the Karolinen Viertel (the "Karoline Quarter", a hip little section of town with it's very own website). I've been learning to sprechen, and all my German friends have been telling me how much better I've gotten, so I was feeling all good about myself and decided to order my drink in the Deutsche. I decided I wanted port, also known as dessert wine. I remembered that the word for dessert is nachtisch and the word for wine is simply wein. So I sauntered up to the bar an said Haben sie nachtische wein? and I slurred it a bit so the words would be a little squooshy and blend together and it wouldn't be so obvious that I'm an American infidel. For a second there, I was pretty proud of myself.

But the bartender, a twenty something girl with extremely red lipstick, looked at me in horror. Turns out that nachtischwein, when properly slurred, sounds a lot like nacht shwein, which OF COURSE means naked pig. Which I suppose could sound like some sort of exotic cocktail ("Naked pig on the rocks please!"), but probably sounded a lot more like a bizarre sexual maneuver ("I'll donkey punch you if you give me a naked pig after! Whaddya say Ms. Sexy Bartender?"). Naturally, she turned to my Deutscher friends, who laughed and clarified the mistake. I turned a little red, and they asked me what I was trying to say.

"Dessert wine," I said. "How do you say dessert wine?"

They all said, practically in unison, "We say dessert wine!"

"Well fuck you then!"

Which I think is about the right answer. How could "dessert wine" possibly sound like "naked pig", and how could Germany have made it this far while speaking such a ridiculous language? I mean really.

:-)