Personally I never had any doubt about my abilities to teach, but I can remember in many of these seminars that graduate students, both new and old, would ask questions that indicated that the thing they feared most was the prospect of going into a classroom and facing students.

These things have ranged from one day pre-fall semester seminars to semester long courses.

It was in one of the latter, an intimate course with 5 other students, where I witnessed an awesome teacher-student exchange. Four of the students were in my department, with the outsider being an overeager weirdo from another department. He took the class seriously, while those of us in the department treated the class like the joke that it was.

It’s not that the class didn’t have value; it was a ton of work for a single pass/fail credit taught by a guy who thought the class was the only thing going on in our lives.

One night our teacher, Captain Obvious, informed us that we should rarely, if ever, belittle or disparage any question asked by a student in class.

This is true: both undergraduates and graduate students tend not to recognize sarcasm and don’t appreciate being made fun of by the professor. Fortunately for the rest of us, the point was lost on the overeager weirdo who immediately asked a question.

“What do you mean by a belittling or disparaging response?”

There was a sharp and sudden icy silence in the classroom as the teacher spun on his heels and turned toward him.

“That is a really stupid question.”

All of those requests were granted.

And then I get the following request:

Dear Sir or Madam

I am writing on behalf of StayPoland Travel. We are a travel company based in Warsaw, Poland and we are operating popular travel websites: staypoland.com (incoming travel to Poland), europe-cities.com (Europe travel guide).

We have recently introduced a new, improved version of the website Europe-Cities.com. New Europe-Cities.com is an in-deep travel guide to Europe containing a variety of information needed by a traveller: descriptions of monuments, restaurants, theatres, history of cities and countries and many many more.

I am writing to you because I found your pictures at flickr.com website and I really think they could make our website more attractive.

I would like to ask you for permission to use the following photos on our website:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/elmada/82618656/

The photos would be presented on our website along with your name as the author of the photo.

Besides, if you would be interested, we would be able to provide a link to your personal website or to your flickr photoset page to allow our users see more of your photos.

If it is possible please contact me via e-mail instead of sending flickr message.

I am looking forward to hearing from you,

Best regards

Tomasz Gorewicz

The photo in question is this one:

I wonder which European City it would promote and what sort of indepth information it provides—I mean although it brings back fond memories for me of New Years Eve in Kiev, I don’t think it's helpful to travel planning.

My previous homes of Denver, Laramie, and Bloomington, have either not made it in at all, or have appeared a number of times appropriate to the size of the place.

I suppose Weimar’s Goethe, Bauhaus, Republic, Nazi, Concentration Camp History is what drives it into the magazine at a rate disproportionate to its size. The first time it appeared in the pages of the Economist was shortly after I moved here in 2004, when the Anna Amalia Library burned.

Weimar made it again becaus the city is getting €90 million to, in the words of the Economist, “step up awareness of Weimar’s place in German culture and history.” Apparently the “Kulturebahnhof” announcements are insufficient, as are the “Kulturestadt Weimar” signs that still are being put up a mere NINE YEARS AFTER it was the European Capital of Culture. Some of the dough, €30 million, is going to a new Bauhaus Museum (the current one is tiny and distinctly unimpressive), while some of the rest is going to rehabilitating the Stadtschloß, turning it “into a new gateway for visitors.”

This strikes me as a bit odd, they are going to attempt to unify the separate strands of Weimar history into one coherent story—with the president of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar declaring that “Our aim is to heighten awareness rather than let you relax.”

I don’t know about you, but generally speaking when I am picking vacation spots, I don’t want to go places that make me tense, I aim for relaxing interesting places, whether they are one of my cultural destinations (say, Armenia) or one of my gay-party places (say, Berlin). Sure there can be moments of tension (police check points, visiting Checkpoint Charlie), but the points of relaxation and calmness are equally, if not more, important. I hope that the planners make sure that they find a way to support those things which also are fun for visitors.

I also hope that this time they will use the money to advertise the city outside of Thüringen—I can imagine now billboards in Frankfurt, “Visit Goethe in Weimar,” or “Visit Where the Weimar Republic Started: Weimar.” Maybe a catching television spot would help: “Your Haus, Our Haus, Bauhaus in Weimar.”

It’s right there in step 9: Take the metal bar, pull on it to extend it to the proper length, then put it in the fittings at the head and foot designed to hold it—it’s the last step before putting on the lattenrost!

I spent a lot of time searching for this not-insignificantly small piece of metal. I looked all over the floor, in the closet, in the other bedrooms, in the living room, in the hallway, outside my flat door—even though, I might add, I hadn’t been in many of these spots since opening the box from Ikea.

The thing wasn’t even in my dirty clothes—I know, because I checked.

I’d confessed my loss last night to my colleague who went shopping with me, via SMS: “I’m 75% thru building bed. Yea! I lost a key piece of metal! Fuck. I hope it shows up in the am or I may need to cry.”

So he came over this morning—and he searched the house while I put the finishing touches on my side table and attached it to the bed frame. He couldn’t find it. He even checked the kitchen, in the unlikely event I’d carried it in there while having a pasta-attack last night.

We took a break and hung my new window shade before returning to the hunt.

Even he was impressed that such a large metal object could vanish in my flat—even as I kept track (and counted) all the small bits of hardware before I started. After awhile he agreed that it was time to call Ikea, which he did for me because mein Deutsch ist Schlecht.

It was impressive, after he got through to the “Idiot Customers Needing Help” department at Ikea, he merely began to describe the problem in the loosest of terms: “we bought a bed, we’re assembling it, and a piece is missing,” when he was informed we were missing the Skorva, and that it costs 10€, and that it’s highly recommended, but not absolutely necessary, nor is it included, despite the fact that the thing is right there in the instructions, and despite the fact that I would have sworn, in a court of law, that I had handled the thing last night when unpacking the boxes.

Such a beautiful explanation, never mind the fact that the piece played a huge role in my dreams last night, while also being responsible for me spending two hours searching my flat where the principle thing I learned was that it’s really dusty under my desk.

Sigh.

I had two specific activities to accomplish Thursday—one was somewhat important, legally speaking, and I got chastised, in German, because I should have done it two months ago (one must follow the rules in Germany), and the other was a hair cut that I scheduled two months ago, before I left, to ensure my favorite guy was there to cut my hair.

It was good I decided to put the delivery off until Friday because Ikea’s delivery service in Erfurt is a gigantic wildcard. Once you pick the day, they promise to deliver your stuff between 07 and 18; a gigantic ten hour window. I was told they would call me about an hour before delivery so that I could be home.

Foolishly I gave them my landline digits, not my mobile number, so I was trapped at home.

However, being the observant fellow that I am, I noticed that the receipt indicated that the estimated delivery time would be available on the Internets the night before. According to the schedule I looked at yesterday, I was assigned a two hour window between 12.15 and 14.15.

Good thing I didn’t believe it: I stayed home this morning working on a project when my phone rang. It was my T-Net Voicemail box calling to tell me that a message had been left while I was in the shower. Four old, non-messages, later I finally listened to today’s message left at 08.15. Somebody either had the wrong number or the delivery service personnel had called to tell me something—however the guy was mumbling and I could only make one word out, “zwischen”, which means “between”. Listening to the message a second time didn’t help my understanding: I think the guy was talking with his mouth full.

A few minutes later, at 09.15, the doorbell rang: Malm was in the house.

So much for the assigned delivery time, and boy am I glad I believe it.

I do have another rant about time-zones! The project I was working on this morning was a deadline demon headache. It doesn’t matter why the project was urgent (other than to say it wasn’t my fault), but I received a threatening email from somebody yesterday telling me that the deadline was FIVE PM TOMORROW.

“Gee, thanks,” I thought to myself, “But what fucking time zone are you talking about?! Are you in Japan, meaning that I have to finish it tonight since I’ll probably still be in bed at 5pm, tomorrow, Japanese time; or is that 5pm in California, meaning that I can put it off until after dinner tomorrow night?”

It’s not like I could tell from looking at company information: they have offices around the world and although I suspected it was the British office, it’s quite reasonable, considering the project, that it would have been the US offices or even ones in India.

Yesterday I found a copy on sale for 5.99€

What mean spirited Christians! I thought their God was an all loving God...

via Mr. Charlie Todd

I headed there with a colleague who walked me through the process of buying a bed in Germany, something which is surprisingly different from America.

The last time I bought a bed in America, I went to the store, picked out a mattress and box-springs combination, and then, because I was poor, I picked out a simple metal frame. When it came to the mattress, there were really only a few decisions to be made: size and firmness. The frame could be complicated, if you had the money to buy something stylish.

At Ikea I started by picking a frame. I settled very quickly on Malm. Beyond the relatively ok price, it had the basic look I was imaging for my new frame with simple clean lines and a sturdy base. It was my only quick decision.

From there I decided upon a 160x200cm (63” x 79”) sized frame because I want a bed that it bigger than the traditional American Twin bed I’m used to. It was a decision I revisited a few minutes later, when my colleague walked me into Ikea’s “Lattenrost” department.

“So what kind of Lattenrost do you want,” he quizzed me.

“What is a Lattenrost and what does it do,” I asked back.

It turns out that this was not an easy question, and he told me that it went under the mattress and supported the mattress. I started looking at the ones on the wall—some including a feature where the head could be elevated, ones with convex wooded slats, others with double convex wooden slats, with yet others covered in plastic. The cheapest one was 10€, with prices rising to astronomical if you got one with a motorized adjusting head piece.

After looking at the prices, it suddenly occurred to my colleague that if I got the 160x200cm bed, that I would need two Lattenrost, a fact that made me worry about a crack in the bed: I don’t like it when Europeans push together two twin bed and call it a full sized bed. The crack between the two beds effectively prevents and discourages me from lying diagonally across the bed.

I went down a size in my bed frame, down to 140x200cm (55” x 79”), thus preventing a crack in the bed.

Once I had a rough idea which Lattenrost I wanted, we moved on to the pressing issue of the mattress, somehow ending up in the Latex section. As my colleague read aloud a sign stating the benefits of the Latex mattress, I asked him if I could only use water-based lubricants with it—he was too absorbed to catch my question—which was probably a good thing because an Ikea clerk wandered by, and he cornered her, asking her advice.

The second she announced that Latex mattresses are good for people who get cold at night, I was off the mattress and off looking at other mattresses: I have an incredibly high internal body temperature and the mere thought of staying toasty warm because of my mattress scared me. She talked us through a couple of other options, and I ended up getting a rather nice mattress that was substantially on sale.

I also revisited the Lattenrost question because the one I had picked out didn’t have a wood frame, and so it might break more easily than one with a wooden frame.

Whatever happened to box-springs? I think that in an American bed, the box springs fulfills the functions of a Lattenrost with the added benefit that it not only comes with the mattress, but its fabric covering matches the mattress’ fabric covering.

If I had to guess, I’d say we spent at least an hour in the Lattenrost and mattress department.

In America I think I selected, purchased, and arranged delivery of my last mattress in less than half an hour.

The strangest part of the process was arranging for delivery. The firm that makes deliveries does so over a large swath of Thüringen—not just the immediate surround city. What struck me as especially odd was the fact that it was a flat rate for delivery based upon the value of the goods being delivered, not the distance involved.

For now I’m excited at the prospect of sleeping in my new bed: it will be delivered on Friday, and then I will have to figure out how to assemble it. My colleague has offered to assist me, and I may take him up on the offer, so it might be Sunday before it’s ready for a nap.

In the mean time, I’ve successfully assembled my new Ikea lamp and am contemplating assembling the matching Malm side table for my Malm bed. I also have my two Ikea candles, my Ikea scissors (for the quilt project!), my Ikea Swedish Meatballs, and my 60 Ikea Swedish Meatball Sauce to enjoy.

On the train ride up there I got quite a bit of work done—from 08:50, when I sat down, until 11:05 when Berlin was announced, I focused on something I needed to get done, rapidly. I even got about half way through it when my computer’s battery started to signal weakness (a bit odd; perhaps I need a new battery) just as I started shutting it down in order to pack up.

From there I had a busy afternoon: I met up my Berlin landlord to get my keys, stopped by the apartment, plugged in my laptop, unpacked a few things, and then headed across Berlin to meet Snooker for lunch.

I’ve bitched about it before, and I’ll bitch about it again, but Berlin is one enormously spread out city: from my flat to her office took me over 45 minutes: walk to tram, tram to Alexanderplatz, up to the S-Bahn, and then a number of stops later, I got off, got briefly confused, reoriented myself and then walked the last two or so blocks to her office during a brief downpour. Thankfully I had an umbrella with me.

Lunch was great—we ate at an Italian restaurant near her office that offers a special 5€ entrée with coffee. Snooker assured me that the portion sizes were smaller during the special than at dinner: I couldn’t finish my dish.

From there I had a plan: I first went to Eisenherz, the gay bookstore in Berlin where I picked up two DVDs that were on sale, two books not on sale, and two free Gay Stadt-Magazines. From there I wandered through the gayborhood briefly before heading back to the Berlin Zoo area, using public transport. From there, I walked on foot across the Tiergarten.

Somewhere in there it dawned on me that I’d made a serious mistake: books are heavy, and carrying them across an enormously long city park was an act of utter insanity. To make matters worse, one of the books I’d purchased is a dense, glossy, and thick book of gay-oriented comics. I started consulting my map of Berlin every time I passed a land mark to see how far I’d gone. The first third was fast, the second third was slow, and the last third was like trudging through a deep pool of molasses.

I was thrilled to see the Brandenburg Gate—the Tiergarten was conquered, my back was hurting, and I was reminded that CNN is still using graphics that show cars driving through the gate, even though it’s never been possible to do so since I’ve moved to Germany.

Just south of the Brandenburg Gate is the new monument dedicated to homosexuals, remembering the terror inflicted upon gays by not just the Nazis, but post-WWII German Governments on both sides of the Iron Curtain that didn’t bother to immediately delete Paragraph 175. I stopped by to see it, a block set in the Tiergarten, with a window one looks through to see a video of two men kissing.

From there, I passed by the Holocaust Memorial and the new US Embassy to catch a bus back to my weekend flat.

Once relieved of the weight, I went for a walk in the neighboring park, working off the rest of my energy in a futile attempt to become tired enough to sleep before dancing. Unfortunately it didn’t work: although I was tired, I was restless and I ended up working for a couple hours, until 10, or so, finishing a segment of a project, which made me very happy. It may sound geeky, but this was absolutely fantastic.

I was wavering, ultimately showering, getting cleaned up, and heading out to G-53, a nightclub that Blu had suggested would be having a mildly sleazy night that sounded very much to my taste. It was tricky getting there, I needed two U-Bahn lines, including the infrequently running U4, a line I’d never ridden before. When I got to G-53, I looked in the door, and it was dead. There was no activity on the street in front of the bar so I decided just to head back to my flat: I’d gotten fresh air, seen freaks on the U-Bahn, and was starting to feel sleepy since I’d never actually slept.

Ultimately I slept really well, briefly waking at 6, only to turn over and sleep solidly until sometime after 8. It was good preparation for my exhausting Saturday at the Volksfest.

We’d made a critical error in our planning process: Snooker found the website for the festival and forwarded it. I promptly clicked through and made a snap judgment: That looks really cool! Both of us neglected to actually read the website, so we ended up planning to meet at 1 for a festival that opened at 2. Fortunately the Volksfest was right next to the Allied Museum, a must for any WWII or Cold War buff, currently featuring a special exhibit covering the 60th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift.

Once we killed our extra hour, we headed back to the grounds where we ate spareribs while drinking (expensive) A&W Root Beer. It was a splendid start to our time at the fair. From there we toured the grounds and rode the rides, including bumper cars, a bruising “Katze und Maus” roller coaster, a trip through a horror house, and the Ferris Wheel.

Kudos to Snooker for noticing what made the Ferris Wheel Extra Special—a casual read of the sign revealed it to be the Moulin Rouge Ferris Wheel—except for the fact that the g had been covered up with a “t”, making it the Moulin Route Ferris Wheel.

It didn’t dampen the joy of the ride: we soared above Berlin, looked out upon the city, and then back to the ground again before zooming back up to the top. It always takes me a few rotations to trust the Ferris Wheel—even though I like flying and going up tall buildings, I hate being on top of tall buildings and other exposed high spaces.

Interspersed with the rides we ate bad food (the “Mexican” food was a huge mistake, and Burger King need not fear the competition of a German Volksfest Cheeseburger) and played silly games winning silly prizes, like a stuffed good luck pig and a stuffed groundhog like animal.

The Monroe County Fair it was not, but as I predicted, it was a fair substitute.