Knall! Bang! The Black Screen of Death

I'm blogging from Stefan's laptop this evening, as mine has been kissed by the black screen of death. My noble husband has rescued the several hundred photographs I've taken since June, and is now attempting to restore the Windows Vista operating system (a.k.a. "this piece of crap").

I'm still in yesterday's confession mode, so I'll mention that I tossed my copy of Harry Potter und der Feuerkelch aside several hundred pages ago, almost as soon as Elias finished Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, but I'm back on the bandwagon again, I swear. Today I purchased Harry Potter und der Orden des Phoenix at the Thalia bookstore in the Altstadt. The book's first linguistic lesson (which I should have learned from the previous book, but better late than never) is that the German word "Knall" pales next to the English word "bang." "Bang" is delightfully onomatopœic: the explosive B moves with shocking abruptness into the vowel a before the word fades into the velar nasal ng. "Bang" ranks right up there with other one-syllable classics such as "pow," "bam," and "biff." Stefan claims "Knall" is onomatopœic too: "kh'-nnahlllll," he demonstrates, sounding more like a purring cat than a gunshot. "Well, it's explosive for us anyway," he shrugs, speaking on behalf of His People.

This evening we met up with the friendly and knowledgable Frau H. for Part II of her Altstadt tour. Alas, Altstadt anecdotes and other observations must wait until my laptop emerges from the dark side.

Rainy day news

I had a mix of successful and unsuccessful German-as-a-foreign-Sprache experiences today. The main challenge for me in Freiburg--aside from having to speak with complete strangers, as opposed to supportive friends and relatives who pretend everything I say makes sense--is that folks here speak with a Badensisch accent, which is very different from the Bairisch accent I've grown used to hearing over the past 20 years.

After Stefan dropped us off downtown, Elias and I found a quiet plaza to sit in, and I phoned the Hochschule fuer Musik to contact the Herr Doktor Professor with whom I hope to take organ lessons this fall. I stumbled over my carefully rehearsed polite opening, Hallo, meine Name ist... "Dang!," I thought, "that was supposed to be 'mein,' not 'meine'--curse you, O noun that ends with an E but isn't feminine like the vast majority of other German E-ending nouns!" That thought took up so much mental space that I couldn't quite follow the receptionist when he said Herr D. was in the concert hall--or maybe on a concert tour--or, well, doing something or being somewhere involving one of those long compound nouns Germans are so good at. I did manage to learn that Herr D.'s telephone number was private, which saved me the embarrassment of a second phone call. Thank goodness for email.

After that, Elias and I stepped inside a bookstore. The salesperson addressed me in English, and I responded determinedly auf Deutsch, successfully asking for and being cheerfully offered exactly the books I was looking for. Yay me!

In other good news, Elias observed brightly this afternoon, "I think maybe I will not fall in a gutter today." And he didn't! We also enjoyed some pea-sized hail, to his great delight.

This evening, I learned that the Muenster was one of the few buildings in the Altstadt not to be destroyed in World War II. The present-day "old town," modeled on medieval city plans, includes several reconstructions of original buildings, with the rest of the new construction in a congruent style.

Having learned this, I'm trying not to feel so embarrassed by the big McDonald's sign on the gate over Kaiser Joseph Strasse, since reconstructed historic integrity isn't quite as precious as the real thing. Or is it? Still, the sign is cringe-worthy.

The cobblestone walks are all relatively new, and they're charming. Many of the mosaics indicate what the adjacent stores sell: a pretzel for baked goods, scissors for haircuts, and a goose for...um...geese? Many of the designs have endured longer than their corresponding businesses, so you might find a toy store with a mosaic pair of scissors on the sidewalk out front. The sidewalk stones are all quite small--ranging in size from about an index finger to a pinky.