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05 May 2006
{ Cologne : May 4 }
I was the first one to arrive at the archive in the morning, at about 10h. Silvia showed up around 10h30, and Marcel was in and out throughout the afternoon. The morning is my favorite time of day to work and study here; with the windows open I can smell the fresh air and hear the little German kids playing at a neighboring kindergarten. A nearby church rings its bells at every hour, and at noon they go wild for a good five minutes.In the afternoon I walked across the street to the college's small bibliothek/mediathek to make some photocopies of articles that Flusser had published in Artforum. The two thin, middle-aged German women that work behind the library counter smiled self-consciously and blushed as I apologized for not speaking German and asked where the copy machine was. Germans, in general, are much more friendly than the French. They actually smile! (Pierre was one of the only ones who gave me that courtesy in Paris.) And few people here have seemed annoyed by my inability to speak their language; all I really know how to say is 'danke schoen' and 'bitte schoen' (though, thankfully, my accent is better than Wayne Newton's).
I left the archive just before 18h and, on Marcel's recommendation, took the tram up to Ebertplatz, a neighborhood in the northern section of the city center (if that makes sense). A cinema called Metropolis was showing the original version (English, no subtitles) of Mission: Impossible 3 at 19h25, and tickets were only 4 euros, so I went ahead and bought one. I had just over an hour to eat, so I found a small café/bar called Casa Mundi that had a few vegetarian options. I knew that it was relatively early for dinner by European standards, but I hadn't expected to be the only one in the restaurant. I took them by surprise when I showed up, and the waitress/hostess had to go to the store to buy some bread while the chef was preparing the rest of my food. It took her a few minutes to run the errand, and the chef had to serve me the salad himself. The food itself was quite good—my main dish consisted of grilled asparagus (both white and green) with a side of risotto mixed with parmesan, spinach, and some sort of cream sauce—but that didn't really alleviate the awkwardness of the situation.
Arriving back at the cinema, I made a sad discovery: the English-speaking social scene in Cologne leaves something to be desired. Watching the small crowd of twenty-some nerdy Americans interact, I got the impression that this was it. They greeted each other with the sort of nervous self-assurance that reminded me of my days as an ex-patriot in Paris, and they eyed me skeptically, as if they were trying to figure out what I was doing at their reunion. Reason no. 2 that I wouldn't want to live in Germany long-term.
That reminds me: I've never mentioned reason no. 1. Allow me to perpetuate some stereotypes as I elaborate on one my reasons for feeling very self-conscious here in Cologne...
Germany is a very masculine country. There's no way of getting around it. Short hair and a solid build will make nearly any woman look manly. What's more is that the women tend to dress and style their hair in the same fashion as the men. And the men... well, they look pretty much like all other European men, though slightly thicker on average. So I guess you could say that Germany is the land of the Mystical Masculine Androgyny. And how does this affect me? Well, from the hair standpoint, all I'd need to do is dye the tips of my faux-hawk/mullet blonde, and I'd fit in perfectly. But as I weigh under 150 pounds, I'm afraid that I'd still look like an underdeveloped 14-year-old girl. Such is the plight of the slight in Germany.
[ posted by Matthew Chrislip at 15:00 :
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