Fernsehshow
TV Show
This weekend we went to Markersdorf to celebrate Mike's Oma's birthday. His grandparents live in Mückenhain, which is even smaller than Markersdorf. Their house is very old and was once a prison. We went to the restaurant in their village and I ordered grilled pork with scrambled eggs on the top and fried potatoes on the side. Mike's grandmother and mother ate tongue, which I find really disgusting. I tried a bite once, and it felt just like you would expect it to, like chewing on a tongue. Very icky.For dessert I ordered ice cream, and Mike's grandparents had a shot of alcohol. I tried to imagine my grandparents having a shot after meals, but couldn't. Later I felt bad, because I had forgotten about the tradition in Germany where the person who is having the birthday treats everyone else. I wouldn't have ordered dessert had I remembered that.
When we got back from the restaurant everyone else went inside to rest before the next meal, so I suggested to Mike that we should take a bike ride to burn off the huge meal we had just eaten. Whenever we visit Mike's family, it is like an eating marathon. You are barely done digesting one meal before the next begins.
We took a nice bike ride around the village and to a lake that used to be a coal mine. It was a little too windy and cold, but the weather here is finally starting to warm up. I am really looking forward to the summer! I was a little upset with myself for forgetting to bring my camera on the trip, because I know pictures of the little village, the houses, and the flowers would have been nice to share.
After the bike ride we had "Kaffee trinken" (coffee drinking) which is a tradition for the Germans to do on weekend afternoons. I don't drink coffee, so I usually have water or juice. This shocks Mike's grandmother because in Europe people drink a lot of hot drinks like tea and coffee. And they rarely drink plain water, only sparkling mineral water. She asked how I could drink so many cold drinks, don't I have a cold stomach? But I guess in Arizona we don't really need warm drinks, even the coffees are iced!
Along with the coffee and tea, we eat cakes or cookies. We had streusel cake and also two store-bought cakes that were kind of creamy and had fruit in them. I like these best because they are sweeter. The sweets in Germany are not very sweet. They are quite plain and usually have fruit in them which tends to be more sour than sweet. This explains why his parents weren't crazy about my chocolate chip cookies which were incredibly sweet and buttery.
After Kaffee trinken, we talked a while and rested. Mike's grandfather showed me the photos on the wall, and pointed out who everyone was. He likes to impress me with his English by saying "thank you" atleast once every visit.
We left after that and went back to Mike's parents' house. Usually on Saturday night there is some big German television show to watch. I find these shows curious because they are live and often three to four hours long. I usually can't stay up until the end.
The most popular show is Wetten dass...? (roughly translated to Wanna bet?) Ordinary people offer to perform strange or difficult tasks. They also have celebrities and musical performances. I find it amusing to watch stars like Nicholas Cage, Celine Dion, Renee Zellweger, and Jerry Seinfeld sitting on the show looking very confused. My favorite bet was when a man claimed he could identify all of his cows by name, based on the way they sounded when eating apples. He was blindfolded, and the cows all had cute women's names. He was able to identify them all correctly!
Another show is called Willkommen bei Carmen Nebel, which is primarily a music show. When we watched, they had Hans Klok, a magician, on the show who performed along with Pamela Anderson. Hans Klok was really entertaining and I would like to see him perform live.
The show we watched last night was called Verstehen Sie Spass? (Do you understand fun?). It is kind of like a candid camera show where they play pranks on people. They told one family they were going to redecorate their home, then they made it really ugly looking and exactly the colors the family said they hated. They also had comedians on the show (which I found boring because it is very hard to understand comedy in a foreign language), and a joke-telling contest.
We are back at our apartment now. I just checked the mail and had a bunch of postcards waiting for me:
Taiwan, Montana, Portugal