Here's something strange I found out about Australia.
Their police officers are *nice*. Well-mannered. Even friendly.
I was getting a lift from my friend Mike on Friday night, and as we were stopped in traffic at the heart of downtown, just opposite Flinders Station, his cell phone rang. He answered it and hadn't gotten more than a few sentences out when a fresh-faced, young (so young he actually looked like a little boy playing dress-up, even despite the wedding ring he wore), blond police officer popped up in his window. "Hi there. Do you have a good reason to be on the phone?" Mike didn't, of course, so we negotiated pulling over around the corner where we'd wait for the cop and his partner.
Mike stopped the car and proceeded to look for his wallet. I nervously kicked the beer bottle sixpack carton under my seat, along with the bottle tops and can opener (we were both sober, so I knew they were relics from another occasion, but didn't know if the police would make such a distinction). Mike's wallet was proving elusive, and by this time the cops had come over to the car. "I'm sorry, I can't find my wallet, officer, I'm still looking for it."
Going on my own experiences with both New York's and Chicago's Finest, this was where I expected Mike to be asked to step out of the car and get ready for a pat-down and some serious attitude from the cop. What did he say instead?
"Ah, no worries, mate."
Yes, I'm serious. He even smiled. Mike eventually found his wallet and gave over his license, and I listened unbelievingly as the officer used the phrase "no worries" at least five more times in the conversation. He asked again if Mike had had a good reason to be on the phone, checked out Mike's license and rego (that's Aussie for "registration"), in filled in the necessary forms. "Sorry, but you might be getting a fine in the mail for this."
Have you ever heard of a cop being apologetic about having to give you a ticket?
After he gave Mike back his license, he sent us on our way with a wave and a "No worries, mate, have a good one"!
Mike thanked him. And since he's Australian, too, I think he actually meant it.
I have at last achieved a truce with the Swedish language.
I would almost go so far as to say that I'm fairly fluent. Oh, I still speak English almost exclusively with my husband, as well as with a number of people that I have well-established relationships with whom I started in English. But I'd say about half of the time I speak Swedish, and I've started to really go back and forth with ease, sometimes even without exactly thinking about it. It only took me five years to get to this stage where I actually feel pretty comfortable with it.
Still, I wonder if I'm stupid.
Because I just can't seem to translate worth shit. It's so difficult to quickly come up with the exact English equivalent of a word when asked sometimes. I know what the word means in Swedish, but it's almost as if I think differently when I think in Swedish and I've never bothered to translate certain words.
Some people seem to have no trouble with instant translation, but I sit on the train and today I was absentmindedly listening in on the conversation of the people behind me and I began thinking, "how exactly would I translate this discussion about whether to go out for dinner or not - what is the English word for 'käka' anyway?"
Plus I have yet to have dreams in Swedish, which is supposedly some kind of sign of fluency.
I wonder how people fare who have to actually learn a language like, say, Finnish, which is as distant from English as Chinese or Xhosa?
How does one define real and true fluency?
Getting ready for work this morning, I was standing in my closet (a large walk-in closet, practically a dressing room) putting on my suit when my teenaged daughter walked in. Her hair was blue. She was wearing a pirate-type shirt.
"I see you're going as a penguin," she said.
It's Fasching Dienstag, the last day of the Carneval season.
At about 80% Roman Catholic, Austria still takes its Church holidays seriously, and Lent starts tomorrow. Today is the climax, and the end, of the season of parties and balls. Today, and throughout Carneval, is the time children (and adults) here wear costumes, (although Halloween is gaining acceptance of late).
My youngest daughter, who attends first grade and has inherited my organizational talents, wasn't sure whether she was supposed to wear a costume to school today, so I had to dress her in normal clothes and pack a costume just in case. At school we determined that, yes, everyone else was in a costume, so she put hers on (she's a cowboy) while I ran home and found some slippers for her (no street shoes allowed in the school) as she had lost hers for the tenth time. Luckily we live across the street from the school. This also comes in handy in the afternoons when she remembers she forgot her homework.
Dropping the other daughter off at the train station, I noticed that there too, most people - especially kids, but adults too, were in costume of some sort. Today is the last day to eat Krapfen, which are donuts filled with apricot marmelade. It is the last day to attend wild costume parties with drinking and eating and sexual license (if yours hasn't expired).
Unless you're lucky enough to work at an office that lets you dress as a penguin year-round.
Tomorrow, people will eat the traditional herring buffet, said to be good for hangovers, and put their costumes back in mothballs in the attic.
The cover story of the January 24 edition of the Dutch magazine Elsevier was ' Everything in America is Better'. The article itself examined 15 popular misconceptions about the US, including the widely held belief that Americans are superficial.
Written by Diederik Hoogstraten, a staff member based in New York, I found it interesting to read his article contesting the idea that Americans are superficial for his Dutch readers.
Do I agree with his conclusions ? Pff! What do I know. But if you care to read a Dutch writer's defense of the American 'How ya doing ? ' culture, I have provided a loose translation which can be found by clicking on 'continue reading'.
Take care !
MANNERS
Friendly
The cliche states that Americans are superficial. This is not true, as anyone who spends more that five minutes speaking with an average American will discover, but it is an understandable mistake. This supposed superficiality has everything to do with the fact that Americans are so amiable and polite.
Every cashier or telemarketer asks : 'How you doing ? '. The correct answer is : 'Good', even if one feels tired or sad. The question, at least when it is being posed by a stranger, does not require an honest answer. It is oil for the social machine, a moment to make contact, to smile, to look at someone and imply 'I come in peace'. It provides a different opening for a conversation than 'Yeah ?', or 'Whatcha want ? '.
The tendency to want to make the other feel more at ease goes even further. Everyone asks each other where they are from, for everyone comes from somewhere else. Rare is the inhabitant of Washington who was born there. It provides an opening and implies interest.
One meets the same friendly and approachable nature when buying something or- for example- renting a car. If there is a problem, it goes without saying that it will be solved immediately. Sales personnel see it as their mission in life to be able to place themselves in the client's shoes and to provide a pleasant experience. Americans don't like to see an empty water glass or an empty cup of coffee, and so the serving personnel are ready in the blink of an eye with a free refill.
And the American will rarely call out to a college that they look like shit again this morning, or that those shoes really have to go. Who is sitting on their edge of their chair waiting to receive such unsolicited, negative feedback ?
Precisely.
We picked up dinner tonight from the frites tent in town - the french fry store. It's almost the last day of Han's 2 week absence, I'm totally unmotivated to cook and it is acceptable- here- to pick up fries once a week or so for dinner. Fries with mayo, in fact.
Usually, I skip it, but tonight I had a craving for a spicy goulash roll which one can get at a frites place. While I like the taste a lot- I rarely get one, not for health reasons but because a lot of times there is an ingredient used in making this particular fried snack that I prefer not to eat. Why don't I just ask the woman at the store what sort of meat is used in the goulash snack she dishes out ? I don't want Sally to know that they still eat horses in the Netherlands. I think that it would upset her to no end, horsey - girl that she is.
It still surprises me, I must admit, that horses are eaten here. It's not that the supermarket has horse-burgers or anything like that, the most common use of the meat seems to be as a smoked , thinly sliced lunch meat, which looks a lot like chipped beef. And in the quick-and - easy sorts of canned and frozen products one can find at a supermarket - canned soups, frozen meals / snacks.
I avoid eating horse. I check every label very carefully of every can of soup or other product which might contain meat, on the lookout for the word 'paard '.
Isn't it really right up there with eating black dogs ?
Somehow I thought taking cello lessons would give me a break from everything else. From work, from cultural differences, from tricky points of grammar or noun genders. Music is, after all, the international language. The human response to music is what unites us, right? So I'm taking cello lessons. I've always loved the sound and three or four years ago I enrolled at the local music school. It has been as difficult as I expected, although not in the ways I thought, and far more rewarding.
I've overcome initial difficulties with intonation and bowing and so on. But what I thought would be the simplest part continues to bedevil me: the names of the notes.
I know the names of all the parts of a cello in German, but not in English, having learned them only now. Same thing for various musical terms. How hard can it be to learn the names of the notes in German? They're letters of the alphabet, right?
Much to my surprise, that is not so. The notes are called a-h-c-d-e-f-g in German, to begin with. You'll notice that what we call "b" in English is an "h" in German. It was originally "b" in German as well, but due to a transcription error centuries ago, they started calling it "h". They know this is a mistake, yet continue doing it because that is the way it is done. Even worse, they don't call sharps and flats "sharps" and "flats", as in "c-sharp" or "b-flat". Instead, they give the notes new names. So c-sharp is "Cis" in German, and f-sharp is "fis".
If you don't believe me, look at this.
Moreover, whereas the note "b" is called "h" in German, the key of "b-flat" is called "b-dur". I'm still not sure about the other notes. So now in my third or fourth year of lessons, when my cello instructor tells me, "no, it's a fis, play a fis," I'm still all, like, "play a what? WTF?"
Otherwise, though, I have to say that learning an instrument in Austria totally rocks. There seems to be a deep and broad respect for music and a sense of its importance, not only (as one would expect) among those working at or attending the music school, but in society in general. Although there are plenty of people here who could care less about classical music, the fact that the Vienna Philharmonic won a Grammy this year was widely reported here, even on popular music radio stations.
Perhaps it is just my own background that makes the attitudes here impress me so. Growing up, my mother had a single classical record (Peter and the Wolf) that she played for us on her fold-out record player when she wanted to expose us to culture. Otherwise, I never heard any classical music, ever, except maybe on television, on a comedy, when they wanted to portray a character as snooty or "cultured".
At any rate, I'm enjoying this immensely.