Travelin'
Greetings from the land where the compound word is King!
Seriously, who strings together as many letters as Germans? It's fun to say the words, even if you don't speak the language, just to marvel at the length of it all, but eventually you run out of breath. We're in Heidelberg, which is gorgeous and sort of classically What Germany Looks Like In My Head, and we've done half a day of just getting oriented and trying to adjust to the time zone and recover from the plane flight. I didn't finish all my shit before I left, so I'm hanging out in our hotel (which looks oddly like a Teutonic Hawa Mahal, and has a nice view of the castle on the hill) surrounded by documents, typing up a report. Yay, vacation! Well, I knew I'd be working, so. I'd just hoped not to bring my deadlines with me quite like I did.
The plane flight itself was unpleasant. To all y'all pregnant folks out there, I'd recommend doing your travel between weeks 19 and 27, because week 31 is a little late. I swear it's not just that I'm pregnant, though. Airplane seats are getting palpably smaller. I had a little attack of claustrophobia when Himself and I switched seats briefly so he could have the aisle. I was trying to work on my laptop but things kept touching me, everywhere - the seat in front brushed my knees, the tray table hit my stomach, the small children behind me kicked my seat, the armrests and elbows of the other passengers hemmed in my arms, and I started getting panicky and flailing a little in my head and had to give up on working and go sit in the back of the plane on the floor for about an hour. Until I saw a little girl in the next aisle use an airsick bag with dubious accuracy, and decided that maybe I could just sleep in my seat, if I stayed very still. Himself, however, graciously ceded the aisle to me once again, saving the day and my sanity.
Air travel seems designed to play on all my neuroses; they rummaged through my purse at the security checkpoint, too. Augh! I'm not a horribly private person, but please to not touch my computer or my purse, peoples. *twitch* I'm so totally playing the pregnant card for all it's worth on the way back, to see if I can force the upgrade. I have amassed some serious belly, at this point, and I'm not afraid to use it.
I have also now seen the hands-down worst movie known to Man. This beats out Highlander, and I never thought I'd say that. Little Manhattan is a sappy romantic comedy set in, natch, upper-class New York. With eleven-year-old protagonists. I watched it with the sound off, and tried not to pay attention at all, and it still hurt my brain. Lots of shots of angsty small white boy and cute peppy big-eyed girl. Gratuitous karate. Weird fantasy sequences seemingly cut out of romcom assignments for an undergraduate scriptwriting course, in which the viewer is bludgeoned about the head with a heavy lovestruck-11-year-old-boy POV, including a technicolor running-across-the-grass-to-embrace scene. Also, did you know that in New York it is always pleasantly sunny and clean, and grade-school-age yuppie children are allowed to walk around in Central Park without any supervision? Because it's true. Anyway, ow. Why was I awake for that, and not for most of Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit? I have terrible sleep timing.
In any case, we made it. And I have found bottled water and bananas and a warm hat, so all is right with the world. I'm not really sure why I came - there was a lot of "why not" involved, I think, and it will be a long while before non-domestic travel is this simple again - but I'm glad I'm here, and I'm looking forward to planning out some day trips, working on a few things that are not (for a change) on deadline, and enjoying some leisurely wanders about the town. I'll be available by email (checking in about once a day) if you need me.
Seriously, who strings together as many letters as Germans? It's fun to say the words, even if you don't speak the language, just to marvel at the length of it all, but eventually you run out of breath. We're in Heidelberg, which is gorgeous and sort of classically What Germany Looks Like In My Head, and we've done half a day of just getting oriented and trying to adjust to the time zone and recover from the plane flight. I didn't finish all my shit before I left, so I'm hanging out in our hotel (which looks oddly like a Teutonic Hawa Mahal, and has a nice view of the castle on the hill) surrounded by documents, typing up a report. Yay, vacation! Well, I knew I'd be working, so. I'd just hoped not to bring my deadlines with me quite like I did.
The plane flight itself was unpleasant. To all y'all pregnant folks out there, I'd recommend doing your travel between weeks 19 and 27, because week 31 is a little late. I swear it's not just that I'm pregnant, though. Airplane seats are getting palpably smaller. I had a little attack of claustrophobia when Himself and I switched seats briefly so he could have the aisle. I was trying to work on my laptop but things kept touching me, everywhere - the seat in front brushed my knees, the tray table hit my stomach, the small children behind me kicked my seat, the armrests and elbows of the other passengers hemmed in my arms, and I started getting panicky and flailing a little in my head and had to give up on working and go sit in the back of the plane on the floor for about an hour. Until I saw a little girl in the next aisle use an airsick bag with dubious accuracy, and decided that maybe I could just sleep in my seat, if I stayed very still. Himself, however, graciously ceded the aisle to me once again, saving the day and my sanity.
Air travel seems designed to play on all my neuroses; they rummaged through my purse at the security checkpoint, too. Augh! I'm not a horribly private person, but please to not touch my computer or my purse, peoples. *twitch* I'm so totally playing the pregnant card for all it's worth on the way back, to see if I can force the upgrade. I have amassed some serious belly, at this point, and I'm not afraid to use it.
I have also now seen the hands-down worst movie known to Man. This beats out Highlander, and I never thought I'd say that. Little Manhattan is a sappy romantic comedy set in, natch, upper-class New York. With eleven-year-old protagonists. I watched it with the sound off, and tried not to pay attention at all, and it still hurt my brain. Lots of shots of angsty small white boy and cute peppy big-eyed girl. Gratuitous karate. Weird fantasy sequences seemingly cut out of romcom assignments for an undergraduate scriptwriting course, in which the viewer is bludgeoned about the head with a heavy lovestruck-11-year-old-boy POV, including a technicolor running-across-the-grass-to-embrace scene. Also, did you know that in New York it is always pleasantly sunny and clean, and grade-school-age yuppie children are allowed to walk around in Central Park without any supervision? Because it's true. Anyway, ow. Why was I awake for that, and not for most of Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit? I have terrible sleep timing.
In any case, we made it. And I have found bottled water and bananas and a warm hat, so all is right with the world. I'm not really sure why I came - there was a lot of "why not" involved, I think, and it will be a long while before non-domestic travel is this simple again - but I'm glad I'm here, and I'm looking forward to planning out some day trips, working on a few things that are not (for a change) on deadline, and enjoying some leisurely wanders about the town. I'll be available by email (checking in about once a day) if you need me.
posted by The Stute Fish at 12:50
2 Comments:
While you are in Germany, see if you can't find the word I was looking for during the last few weeks of my pregnancy. People would ask if I was excited to be a parent. I wanted to say I was excited and scared out of my mind, but I wanted that in one word. I feel the Germans should have a word for it. Let me know if they do.
If anyone has a word for that, it would be the Germans - I'll ask my friend (who is not German, but I think is fluent) when I lunch with her next week. I certainly have gotten to know the feeling itself quite well in the last few months -and I am torn between wanting to meet him NOW NOW NOW and wanting my life to NEVER EVER CHANGE because change is SCARY...it's not ambivalence so much as it is simultaneous opposite convictions, yoiks! Good thing that it's out of my hands.
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