On the radio, maybe one out of every ten songs is in German if you're lucky. Driving through Oberhausen and Dusseldorf and Duisburg and other very German towns singing along to Lady Gaga and LMFAO isn't quite what I'd imagined-- but it's such good fun.
On the T.V., I've watched Grey's Anatomy and Scrubs, and Hannah Montana and CSI Miama, and seen movies from Catwoman to the Echelon Conspiracy-- again, all very English. In fact, apart from news, I don't believe I've watched anything German in origin- which isn't to say I won't, but I never expected things popular back at home to be carried overseas.
But oh man- people here do love their dubbing.
Now, sometimes voiceovers are fabulous.
But then the actors launch into their superschnell dialogues and it just all goes way-y-y over my head.
And other times the voices are just a little bit painful.
Or just a lot painful.
So my lovely host sister, who is my age and was actually an exchange student herself in Hawaii last year, speaks quite fluent English. This translated to getting to watch Sherlock Holmes 2 Spiel im Schatten with her in English (and actually understanding what was happening!) the other day.
My other host sister wanted to watch it in German today.
And whereas I'll admit Robert Downey Junior sounded quite like himself, Jude Law auf Deutsch just made me sad. His own, actual voice is just so... and the mustache just makes it even more so.... and in German it was just so not.
Bah.
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In my previous blog post I talked about my issues with the train system here. Well, it turns out my commute wasn't very well planned-out, and it hasn't gotten much better since. Namely, my trains come at very unfortunate times, and I spend more time than should ever be necessary commuting. Totally spent, and barely getting sleep on top of residual jet lag, I wasn't feeling at ein hundert pro-cent, so I stayed home to recharge.
In German, recharging apparently translates to roadtrips with the fam-bam:)
A shopping trip to the Netherlands (no big deal or anything) happened. It was adorable, with cobblestone streets galore in the town and more bikes per capita than people, and the stereotypical [and yet absolutely gorgeous] European look. I finally got to eat my European 'pommes-frites' with a little fork and mayonnaise as well, which made me very happy:)
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| Netherland riverfront |
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| Soo many bikes |
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| Raesfeld Schloss |
A while ago, my family took me to see Raesfeld Schloss, which was an adorable little castle with no less than three weddings there that morning alone. This time, we drove over to Sauerland to visit Burg Altena. This was more of a fortress, with all sorts of cool super-tight spiral staircases and little slots from which archers lined up to fire arrows. A museum wound around the inside of the castle as well, and one of the displays was this cute little replica of the place.
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| Altena mini-model |
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| Burg Altena |
There are so many castles here, it's like having giant playgrounds in every other town:)
And on an entirely irrelevant note;
In the houses neighboring Burg Altena, there was a dog wearing pants on a roof.
Take notes boys, that's some straight-up German swag right there.
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