Willkommen!

All girly teenage movie references aside, welcome! Willkommen! Bienvenidos! Bonjour!

Perhaps a more appropriate title would have been "Elizabeth's Travelling, Non-Slutty, Workplace Appropriate Skirts and Dresses," but it didn't seem to roll off the tongue as well. So, pants it is. And currently, my pants-clad bottom is working in the international marketing department for a Munich-based IT firm. As thrilling as my work may be - creating marketing materials for their US expansion - there will be very little talk of it here. Regardless of what my sister might say, I'm not completely retarded, and the last thing I want is for something written here to come back and bite me in the ass.

I will, however, go into excruciating detail about the rest of my life - I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that my mother will be this blog's only devoted fan. Even though I am sometimes painfully boring, she still finds me interesting :)

Hi mom.

Life in Germany is... German. Surprising, I know. The public transportation is immaculately clean and always on time. Sausage and beer are common lunchtime staples. Espresso is consumed at all hours of the day or night. The most common word in German advertisements is "efficient." However, I am fascinated by my keyboard - it has special keys for letters with umlauts. ü ö ä. I am extremely entertained by umlauts. They make any word more interesting...

Elizäbeth. München. Würst. Snüggle.

Speaking (bad) German has become part of my everyday life, and I think I understand how non-native English speakers feel in the US. We're not very nice to people who don't speak English, and the Germans are the same about German. Whenever I get stuck on a word, I get a withering look and a response in English. Surprisingly, I only get this reaction from young people. The elderly are very patient with me and I have daily conversations with Hilda, the woman who bakes for the office. Old people like to talk about their families - one topic I actually know vocabulary for. Ja, meine Mutter und mein Vater. Ja.

Well, that's it for now. I'm going to get some lunch... and to quote a favorite saying of my boss "okey dokey, back to verk!"