Sois polie si t'es pas jolie...

Hey!

New update from Saarbrücken where I am starting my second week as a translator! Things are going fine for me here, though I am a little bored in the evening (which means I'll be telling you about new series I am watching pretty soon...), and the job is getting more and more interesting everyday, except for today when the USV-system crashed down... don't know what it's called in English (though it's probably USV too...) but it's supposed to protect your computer against power surges. Only I did not quite understand what the computer guy told me, but you're supposed to unplug the damn thing before power cuts.

It sounds like these USV thingies are real sissies, and I think (*hope*) I understood the guy wrong (honestly, that would just be too stupid to be true), but whatever the real issue with the USV may be, they crashed, and I spent 3 extremely entertaining hours this morning thinking about the extra time I could have spent in bed and looking intently at my blurred reflection in the blacked-out computer screen. Aaaaay'v aaaad ze taaayme of my laaaayfe....

I am having a much more comfortable week this week than last week (lots of weeks in this sentence) though, because I have brought pans and saucers from Colmar, as well as a wonderfully beautiful orange curtain, with butterflies on it, which mercifully shields me from the outside while at the same time letting some light through, so I can live my life happily and not feel like I am living in a cave. Just as well, really. I was starting to miss my tooth-brush dance sessions (Rihanna bellowing in my iPod tends to make teeth-brushing much more interesting somehow.)

I also spent my time here (or at least the little time I spent not in the office and out of home (i.e. mostly in the bus) discovering a little more about the German culture. Because although I have been living less than 50km from the German bordure for most of my life, I have never actually spent any real time in Germany at all.

Surprisingly enough, really, it is a lot like Austria here, and the more I see, the more I feel I have more Germanity about me than I care to admit when people say "oh, you're from Alsace, you're German..." My reaction is mostly extremely annoyed then, but I just have to say, it is true that we Alsacians have very German characters. For example, our idea of politeness is the same I think. Anyway, my idea of politeness. I think that's why people think Germans (and the French too, I think) are so cold: we people like to leave people alone. It is more polite to let them decide wether they want to talk or not, so we do not start a conversation, but answer with a smile when someone tries to do so.

Unlike the Anglo Saxons, supposedly, who think it's more polite to make strangers feel welcome. On the one side, they feel at home and lonely, on the other, they feel welcome. I don't know, it's up to you to make your choice between Graz and Dublin!

I have also been able to notice that cashiers are just as terrible here as in Graz: I don't know how regular people manage to stuff everything in their plastic bags before running away here, but I am not super-Greta yet and I NEED more than 30 seconds to pack everything in bags. Please, cashier, if you hear me, do not look at me with those evil eyes. I am but an innocent creature, looking for means to feed myself. Mostly vegetables.

Anyway. This post is becoming wayyy to long and confused and has no proper theme, so I'll leave it at that. I would have sent you a nice picture of Eric le Basilic, who's half dead already, only I forgot to bring my camera's cable, so I'm deprived of MP3 player AND photos on my blog till the end of the week. *life's tough*...

Have a nice day!!