Knee Deep in Jazzmeile

On Friday I ventured to Erfurt for a little concert with the Terence Ngassa Afro Jazz group. The venue was a little tricky to find, but I somehow managed to find it with relative ease and I was actually kind of early. No matter, I ordered myself a beer, had my pick of the all the seats in the house, and sat back to observe my fellow audience members start to shuffle in. I happened to notice, though, that aside from the very kindly older gentlemen that ran the place, the crowd was also a little bit older, too. This kind of surprised me-I can´t really explain it very well, but I was expecting more younger folks to come out to an afro jazz show. In the end it didn´t matter, the music was sweet and my tablemates were also very friendly. Though I wanted to stick around and talk with the band, I had to head back to the train station to catch the last train that left that evening unless I wanted to sleep on the cold streets that night.

My plan for Saturday was to do more city exploring and see what I could find. I also got a couple tips on record stores around the city and I wanted to see what they had to offer. The weather was downright nasty in the morning. It was raining mostly, but occasionally there would be a drop of slushy-type stuff. The great thing about this place so far, though, is that it doesn´t really stay cold here for very long. We´ll have to see how much that changes in the dead of winter. Anyway, Saturday evening I ate dinner with Conny and we went over to our friend Basti´s house for a game night. We played Tabu (the same game like you´d find in the states), and yes it was really hard for me to play in German but fun nonetheless. Then we played a game called Palermo-this is one of those card games where there are murderers, citizens, and spies/detectives. I´ve played versions of games like it before, so I´m sure a couple of you know what I´m talking about. That was a blast as well. I also found out through perusing Basti and Ralf´s collection of movies that there is a version of Spaceballs dubbed in German...crazy.

Sunday morning Conny and I went to Grunowski for a little breakfast buffet..mmmm, breakfast buffet. And that night I went to a jazz concert here called the 3 Guitars with Larry Coryell, Badi Assad, and John Abercrombie. I liked this a lot more than I thought I would. The woman that played with them added a really interesting element-at one point she played a solo song where she was making sounds with her mouth (like in a lot of African songs), humming, and playing crazy guitar all at the same time! Mainly the whole show was just the acoustics, but occasionally they´d add a little flute-like instrument or the thumb guitar-thing. I struck up a conversation with the guy next to me during the break, and he said that he was surprised to find out I was from the USA because I didn´t have an accent. I brushed this comment off saying that when I speak English, some people think I have an accent because I´m from the North, but this did make me feel like the month and a half I´ve spent here has at least improved my German a little. Woo hoo! I definitely do not sound anything like a native speaker, but we have to think little steps, people.

And now since I´ve just thought of a couple, it´s time for everybody´s favorite thing....More Pros and Cons!

Pro-I like how Germans will greet everyone personally every time they arrive. Okay, maybe not every single solitary time, but pretty darn close. And not just a universal "hello" to everyone when they walk in the room, but a hand shake and/or hug to everyone even if the room is so crowded everyone can barely move and it would just be a whole lot easier to say "hi everybody!" and leave it at that.

Con-I think I´ve been spoiled living in the almost entirely no-smoking-in-public-places Bloomington (with the exception of bars until 2005). Smoking is allowed pretty much anywhere except a few places which don´t include trains. I smell like smoke a lot of the time even though I have successfully remained a non-smoker. Eww.