The word for cafeteria in Switzerland is “mensa”. Ours publishes their menu in german every week, and Babelfish helpfully translates. Some tasty-sounding items include:
– pouletbruestli in the corn flakesmantel
– kraeutermayonnaise
– geschnetzeltes schweinefleisch according to kind of inhabitant of zurich
– calamares in the paste
– daily supplement
– sea radish foam
– pegususfilet
– dorschnuggets
– robot hog
Ok one of those is something I apparently said loudly in my sleep.
While trying to remember the word tmesis, I found the wikipedia entry for shit, which contains this paragraph:
Non-native English speakers should take note that shit and fuck often serve different uses as expletives, such that (for instance) the gerund, shitting, is rarely used emphatically. Ex.: In the sentence, I was so shit-scared of that shithead that I shit-talked him into dropping out of the shitting karate match, the phrase, shitting karate match, would be incomprehensible to native speakers except in suggesting a singularly unsanitary form of karate. (In the UK, phrases such as shitting hell as an emphatic are not unknown.) A correct and clear vulgarism would be, the fucking karate match. Similarly, shit is never used as an infix: While in-fucking-credible is comprehensible English, in-shitting-credible is not. Shit you! is likewise a puzzling and ineffective expression of defiance. It is not uncommon, however, to encounter an adjective constructed partially of the word shit, such as “Shittastic” or “Shittacular”.
The other day I attended a symposium in honour of Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered LSD. He is an alumni of the University of Zurich and just turned 100 years old. He looked like it was about 85.
Last night Anne & I were whomped 12-0 in foozball by a slightly overweight Swiss man who sported a fashionable too-tight sweater, tacky gold chain worn on the outside, a porn-star mustache, and an enormous mullet. He played the second half of the game with one hand behind his back.
Sometimes it’s fun to work in a chemistry department.
I just saw a woman walking down the hall holding a styrofoam box with blue smoke billowing from beneath the lid. Her gait said “I transport harmlessly smoking boxes all the time,” but the look on her face said “I better get these baby alien nodules back into stasis before they reanimate.”
Also, there are occasional explosions.
http://www.ep.tc/aa-comics/
http://cuteoverload.com/
http://www.groovetube.tv/site.htm
The hauptbahnhof in Munich looks exactly like the one in Zurich, except it is covered in rabid soccer people. Rabid like sleep-deprived Raiders fans on angel dust who suddenly have access to one of the world’s finest public transportation systems, thus making the consumption of beer hours before the game starts feasible, each with an also sleep-deprived mother wolverine-wraith strapped to their viking helmets.
Let’s see what word’s grammar checking thing has to say about that sentence:
I didn’t know Viking was capitalized. Recommend changing who -> that. That’s it?
As I was saying, that is the only difference between the two train stations.
When a person goes to Munich, they pretty much want one thing: those big-ass 1-litre glasses of beer know to the munchkins as a MASS. Every beer hall only featured one brewery’s beer and I only saw the big 5: Franziskaner, Spaten, Lowenbrau, Paulaner, and Augustiner. I was certain that Munich would unseat Portland as undisputed beer variety overlord, but I uberestimated the bavarians. P still has more variety of tastiness per square meter.
If you’re ever in Munich, be sure not to not realize that kartoffel means potato that that the Kartoffelhaus is a horrible abonination; an insult to potatoes and restaurants world-wide. It may LOOK charming and homey on the outside, but once inside you realize that these people are fucking crazy about potatoes and you are doomed to a dinner in which baked potatoes have infiltrated all dishes. Serves me right for not going to some sort of sausagehaus instead.
BUT I had been burned on that front earlier in the day. At the bierhalle I got lentil soup with sausage, but no one warned me that the sausage would be so authentic that it would have METAL CLIPS ON THE ENDS. HIDDEN IN THE SOUP FOR ME TO BITE ON. WTF Bavaria?!
Munich kicks Zurich’s ass in terms of street musicians. Highlights include:
– an actually good classical string quartet
– those peruvian flute dudes who seem to be everywhere these days, except in full american indian headdresses
– a lone man in a deserted alley at night playing the godfather theme music on a clarinet
– a trio of mongolian throat singers w/crazy mongolian outfits & mongolian instruments and HOT DANG wuz they good! Watched in pure mongolian mezmerization for 25 minutes. Turns out they are Chinggis Khaan from Mongolia. Turns out. Holy crap was that cool.
A picture of an actual door in historic Munich:
http://users.sdsc.edu/~mpackard/wtfsc.jpg
Last night was our department christmas party. It was at this nice restaurant in a big ole house. It was one of the coolest dinners I’ve ever had for this reason: at my table there was an Albanian girl who grew up in Switzerland, a Swiss guy who grew up in Thailand, a Swiss guy from Switzerland, an Italian, two French, another Italian who is fluent in German, English, and French, a half-Thai half-American girl, and me, from fucking Normal Illinois USA. Once the wine started flowing there were always three conversations going on at once in six different languages. A highlight was when Anne taught everyone “jing jing luuuh”, which means something like “very true!” or “WERD!” in Ghortspeak, so in my head I hear 8 different people all saying “WERD!” in their respective accents. Beautiful.
Also, the Europeans are meticulously thorough about cheersing, which takes upwards of 5 minutes with 9 people at the table.
I’m having trouble fitting a joke to this punchline:
20 Italian girls in a Fiat!
I am open to suggestions. This is what I thought of in the last 2 minutes, but I think you, dear reader, can do better:
What has 40 hairy legs but can’t go anywhere?