The Königsallee in Winter

Bloody Foreigners

Ten Things That Happen When You Live Overseas

(especially, but not exclusively, in non-English-speaking countries)

- You spend a week thinking you have a terminal illness, and then you realize you've bought decaffeinated coffee. You also think that supermarkets should put alcohol-free beer in a separate aisle.

- When you visit your hometown, and people ask "How's [new country]?" your answer is either incomprehensibly specific: 

"...well, my Steuerberater just told me that the Finanzamt have declared our 2000 Euro freelance tax exemption invalid because I was working on a Lohnsteuerkarte for the first half of 2009; that's bloody Germany for you"

     or merely witless:

"...s'nice thank you".

- You get annoyed when: Germans claim that Japanese people eat cats; Japanese worry that Britain is overrun with football hooligans; Brits say they met an American once and he was a right prick; Americans ask if Germany still has a Nazi Party.

 - You become so accustomed to no one understanding quick, idiomatic comments that you will remark, loudly, on a busy Newcastle street, that "it's always the heifers that wear tube tops, isn't it?" 

- You are fluent in zero languages, but able to mime 'our broadband connection is running very slowly today, please tell me if there's a local problem'. You can also order a meal via interpretive dance: "uh, boss? There's a foreigner out here prancing like a chicken and waggling her fingers to indicate noodles. Should we give her the poisonous blowfish?".

- Your voluminous correspondence with the Student Loans Council rivals that of the Mitford sisters.

- You're glad you wear the largest shoe-size for women, because you don't have to bother remembering that you're a British 8, a European 41 and an American 10. You just follow the trannies to the right part of the shop.

(In Japan your footwear choices will be restricted to a mistakenly-imported pair of white Birkenstocks or the men's department.)

- You prefer moving west, because you're several hours younger there.

- You understand that bitching about the NHS is like complaining that the hem is down on your inherited mink coat.

- You only know you're British because all your underwear says 'Marks and Spencer'.

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Duck Soup, Düsseldorf

You Wake Up At LAX

Tyler Durden gave insomnia a bad name. It's really not that terrible if you don't have a job in the morning, or any father-issue-related latent aggressive tendencies which eventually lead you to develop an alter-ego who destroys your IKEA furniture.

(And Tyler 'your condominium is holding you back' Durden would get short shrift in this household, where any savings we might theoretically possess are eternally locked up in rental deposits. Sizeable rental deposits, because we didn't have Social Security numbers when we moved in, and had to put up extra cash to reassure everyone that we were real people. I bet even Tyler Durden had a Social Security number.)

Dr Strangename has retired to bed with all the moral righteousness of the recent convert -- he was notably nocturnal throughout his PhD, which was convenient, given that he was in England and I was in Japan. Now he's a functional adult who starts work at 9am,  but he still has guilty little lapses at the weekend; staying up until 4am reading football blogs and dispatching lines of code to supercomputers, then concealing it the next morning like another sorry addict.

Insomnia in California beats insomnia in Germany, hands down, because we have cable TV. I feel perfectly entitled to watch as much TV as I like, since I own many leather-bound books and several college degrees. With my magical remote,  I can study Organizing With Ease, Painless Hair Removal, or Summer Sexy Abs. I could be Discovering the Bible or Exploring Society or watching Southland whilst reading the LA Times Homicide Report online and having a panic attack.

Actually, I may just put on Entourage and feel mildly depressed that that LA, the sleazy/glamourous one, is still a different country, even if I do volunteer at a school that's convenient for the Viper Room. Speaking of which, Johnny Depp was in Westwood for a premiere last night, and owes many people an apology for causing utter gridlock throughout the area. Certain non-resident legal aliens were forty-five minutes late for their Valentine's dinners, which would have caused husbands to become apoplectic had they not consumed large bottles of Asahi whilst waiting. When I finally arrived, the waiter was rather short with us, but that's ok; we're European and still forget that tipping isn't optional.

(In Germany, one of my visiting friends mistook a 0 for a 6 on our restaurant bill and inadvertently left a huge tip, which led to the young waitress giving us a stern lecture on Teutonic gratuity etiquette and essentially making my friend feel as if he'd handed her an obscene proposal on a napkin).

Is traffic any more glamorous because Johnny Depp is causing it? No. Especially not when you're on the bus.

Insomnia in California doesn't beat insomnia in Japan, though. If you want to stay up all night in Japan you'll at least have a vending machine within slipper-walking distance, and the opportunity to make ridiculous amounts of money, without compromising too many morals, doing night-shift English classes. Teaching eight lessons, from eleven pm to seven am, you pass through interesting strata of Japanese society:

Before midnight your clients are overworked or drunk or both.
From midnight till two your clients are insane.
From two till four your clients are rice farmers.
From four till six your clients are retirees who like to get in at least ten self-improving activities before breakfast.
From six till seven your clients are school children who really wish you would drop dead.

At seven you walk home though all the daytime commuters, your tiredness simply a mirror-image of theirs.

Oh god. Another trailer for Battle: LA is on the television. I don't need to see dramatizations of local landmarks being reduced to rubble, thank you very much. I have a husband here tinkering with the fabric of the universe, and did I mention my security deposit?

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German Hearts, Last Summer

Pestilent Beasts

Recently, the cats have been interrupting their standard position (reclining manatee) to scratch vigorously. Fleas. Aside from this being disgusting, it’s really disgusting because both cats are indoors-only. This means either Dr Strangename or I brought in the pestilence. How horrible -- I blame Dr Strangename, of course, due to his recent predilection for hanging around Parisian flophouses and the Haight-Ashbury.

I go to Petco in search of pharmaceuticals: drops, sprays, tablets, flame-throwers.  There is the usual Germany/USA retail culture shock. Here comes the national stereotyping.

In Germany, whenever you wish to purchase anything, there will invariably be two options*: the expensive one that costs a year's salary but can be bequeathed to your grandchildren, or the cheap one that is already broken. Both options will be hideous, and served to you with unconcealed disdain by a shop clerk who is operating secure in the knowledge that little, short of murder-suicide, can get you fired in the Socialist Republic. You must to hurry up and making your choose, schnell, because the shop is closing in half an hour and won’t reopen until Monday; the clerk is already deciding whether to spend his undeserved Sunday off Nordic walking, strolling around the city centre in a fur coat looking in the windows of closed department stores, or drinking Killepitsch in the local Schloss Schänke. Oh, and I suppose you want a bag for that, too? Prut. 

(*The only exceptions to the two-options rule are a) preserved meats and b) beers, because in Germany you cannot possibly have enough varietals of preserved meats and beers.)

In America, of course, it’s well documented that too much is never enough. I like this philosophy, despite its potential for ruining the character and waistline. But I cannot choose between forty brands/forms of flea zapper. Trying to pick a mid-price black mascara from thirty different types of mid-price black mascara makes me tearful, and I know something about mascara.

And, dear god, there’s all the other stuff, too. This Petco is bigger than our local supermarket in Germany. There’s kitten shampoo and dander-reducing serum, and I don’t know what a dander is. Maybe we do have too much. In the toy section they’re selling a thing in a bag called a Thing In A Bag©. I chance upon the Booda Dome Clean Step Litterbox©, reduced to $32.99: ‘Scoop Up The Savings!’ (not to mention the cat shit). Then there’s the Littermaid Elite©, an automatically self-cleaning tray, advertised at $60 as The World’s Greatest Litterbox©. But what about The Universe's Greatest Litterbox? Is it here? Is it in development? Can I get a discount coupon?

Eventually I come over all European, buy a $2 flea comb, and walk back down Westwood Boulevard. Because some of Dr Strangename’s European travel expenses have been reimbursed -- don’t get me started on the pyramid scheme that is academic travel, necessitating us to shell out for international flights and hotels then eat beans for months while we dream of the big payback -- I atone for the fifty hours a week I spend reading in Barnes and Noble, and actually stop in to buy two books. One is even full price. On the way out I’m discomforted to see that the ‘For Mom’ selection of the week is apparently ‘Surviving a Shark Attack (On Land)’, a self-help book about betrayal (including some pleasing intimations that adulterers, having broken the covenant of marriage, can be trusted with no further public duties and should presumably just be pushed out to sea on an ice-float). Recommended ‘For Dad’ is ‘It’s Not Really About The Hair’, the memoir of an gay Australian beautician turned American reality show star.

Maybe when my work permit arrives I’ll apply for a job at Barnes and Noble.

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Miss Manners at the Mall

- Acne Thrives On Your Indecision

- Reinvent the 5 pocket pant!

- GIVE freely with a mall gift card

After two years of incomprehension in Germany, American signs bully me; apart from this, the Westside Pavilion shopping mall is as anodyne as a hotel bathroom, and an ideal antidote to LAX.  As it's only a mile away through a toytown suburb, and Los Angeles has been blue-skied for twenty-five consecutive days, I walk. This surprises several side-road-turning drivers, including one with the vanity plate AH0Y M8E and another whose car is decorated with red handprints. Maybe when the Big Bumper finally gets me, this'll be it: palm trees, roses and astroturf-perfect lawns. Except for a mock-Tudor two-storey with a Zen garden, nothing rises higher than a bungalow. By the freeway underpass I surprise a transient taking a leak in a miniature hedge. We're the only pedestrians.

It's only a shame that by the time I get to the mall I look like an extra on Miami Vice -- rolled up jacket sleeves, slicked back hair, suspiciously sweaty. The typical American mall always makes me feel shabby and apologetic, especially when it's nearly empty on a Friday afternoon and everyone wants to be your friend. Two women in Victoria's Secret enquire about my feelings on lingerie. Someone at a concession stall tries to sell me $9 soap. I buy nothing, as per instructions to lay low -- belly-on-the-floor low -- until Dr Strangename's paycheck clears on Tuesday, and scutter guiltily through the neon gelato and colour-coded Gap shirts to Barnes and Noble, where I read a book about ballerinas. Then I walk home. The transient is now sitting on the low wall outside Winchell's Donuts, eating a cruller. He calls me Hey Babydoll, and I don't reply.

- You got no manners,

he observes, correctly, as the Big Blue Bus comes through the underpass. I get onboard, reflecting that accomplishments today have been limited to a ten-minute phone conversation with our dental plan provider. When we arrive at my stop, a woman calls me sister and asks for bus fare, so I give her $2; around here that's enough to get you there and back.

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No Ped Xing

No Ped Xing

No Ped Xing

say the signs along the Howard Hughes parkway, as Dr Strangename and I head to LAX this morning. We take a Culver CityBus, even though the Culver CityBus is green and therefore beyond the remit of this blog. Inching south, its passengers a Venn diagram of the aged, deranged and down-at-heel, the 6 passes through a dilapidated series of Americana. It's like being on an abandoned Disney ride, lacking only mechanical hookers waving from the windows of the pastel motels.

Over here, disheveled beauty parlors offer Fine Hair Imports and Symple Grooming. Restaurant names come in three grades: classic (Johnnie's French Dip and Pastrami; Tito's Tacos; Dinah's Diner), unappetizing (Grinders, Sizzlers, Shakers) and inexplicable (the Edelweis Chalet). After dinner you can choose between being robbed and beaten at the Tattle Tale Cocktail Lounge, or beaten and robbed at the Scarlet Lady Saloon. 

While I wonder why an EZ Lube and a Jiffy Lube would set up shop within a block of each other, and which sounds ruder, Dr Strangename vacillates over the talk he must give in San Francisco and makes ill-advisedly loud comments about the welfare of his wife being alone in the city for three days. The man in front of us wakes, coughs onto the window, and folds up again. The bus runs a giddying set of circlets at the Culver City Bus Terminal, where the driver kicks down the access ramp and helps on a patron in a wheelchair, remarking

- Ain't nothing change but the date, Kenny.  

Kenny laughs and laughs and laughs, and waves at the hard-luck Debbie Reynolds boarding behind him. Outside, a man dressed as the Statue of Liberty and holding a sandwich board advertising tax services walks by. You can tell we're near the airport when jumbo jets begin slaloming a hundred feet overhead.

- El Lay Eggs,

sings the driver, making Kenny laugh again, and drops us off in a dirty parking lot. The duller the city, the nicer the airport; hence, Düsseldorf airport is cold steel, white lines and has a Skytrain, and the LAX transit hub smells like piss and hobos. Blank-windowed Radisson, Sheraton and Marriots stand by it like well-dressed strangers ignoring a streetcrime. We take a shuttle to the terminal. LAX itself feels more edgy than a civilized Western airport should; perpetually lit by the slow amber tones of 1970s cop drama, its stained concrete and palm trees lend it the air of a South American dictatorship run to ruin.

Dr Strangename checks in. I go back to catch the bus home. This is the fifth time I've been to the airport since Christmas, without having once left LA; there was the Texan arrival and departure of my good friend Rodeo Girl, and then Dr Strangename had to go to France. The moment I realized that my husband's career had taken him to the Other Side -- the side where all the successful people are, networking and drinking freely from the minibar -- was when he said, with a straight face, that although it sounded like fun, it was work, and he wouldn't see much of Paris beyond hotel and conference rooms.

(His being right about this makes no real difference.)  

I catch exactly the same bus for the return trip. Same seat; same sleeping man; same driver, who asks

- Didn't I just see you?

and I nod.

- Ain't nothing change but the date,

he says. Quite.

Origins of the Blue Busrider

- GO BACK TO CHINA

said an old man on the bus today, his eyes glittering.

The only time I've been to China was changing planes: Osaka, Beijing, Beijing, London.

- Osaka? Okay, GO BACK TO JAPAN.

Although I lived in Japan, I'm not Japanese. Please don't feel you have to sit any closer, but I'm actually Caucasian, which is why I look so confused right now.

- We're on the bus in LA. Everyone's confused. Where do you come from?

Are you demanding zat I show you my papers? I did just move here from Germany. But I'm British.

- What are you, some kind of international hobo?

When I met my husband, a decade ago, he won my heart by declaring his ambition to be a bearded drifter. Mind you, at the time he was clean-shaven, I was very drunk, and we were in the university bar.

- So the pair of you wander the world with your life in a bindle?

We've pared it down to ten boxes, two large suitcases, and wearing all our clothes to the airport. Oh, and a couple of crates marked LIVE ANIMAL.

- How the hell did you get into the USA?

We had visas. My husband, Dr Strangename, is an academic.

- But you don't have a work permit?

Not yet. My current visa authorizes me to be here for ornamental purposes only.

- Are you a rich housewife of Beverly Hills?

Yes. I just enjoy taking the bus with lunatics.

- Really?

No. We don't have enough money for a car, and we don't live in Beverly Hills. We live close enough to the 405 Freeway that the back wall of our bedroom vibrates.

- So what do you do all day?

Ride the Blue Bus, ponder what to microwave for dinner, and pretend that I'm only pretending to be a housewife.

- And who is Ped Xing? Sure sounds Chinese to me.

Ped Xing is invisible to the populace of Los Angeles, judging by the number of times she's nearly been mown down by Escalades turning right on a red light. In her mission to traverse the City of Angels safely and at a reasonable cost, she becomes... the Blue Busrider.    

- I wish I'd never started this conversation now.

I'm sorry. Please go back to clipping your toenails and shouting about the albatross.