Simonout, Simone out, and some smiles

Yep, the ups and downs of life keep coming in typhoon sized waves, and I'm so used to it that I just kind of shrug, smile sheepishly and move on. One minute I'm thinking I'm back on track, the next minute things are so screwed that I'd just as soon have a root canal performed each week by my dentist.

The past two weeks have been ones filled with lots of reflection. I think a lot of that has to do with the recent death of Lorie; her memorial service was held a couple of weeks ago. I understand the service was quite emotional, but powerful and positive. I was certainly there in spirit, and was really glad to hear that so many people were able to be there to pay respect.

Sure, I've thought a lot about friends over the past weeks (though I'd certainly argue that I tend to think about a lot of friends anyway), but perspectives change after a sudden events, both sad and joyous, don't they?

I remember late last year saying that the Spanish experience had been brilliant; the only thing I was missing was the job. This year, the experience is equally fantastic, with the only downside being, er, the job. Funny enough, I wanted the chance to return to the thick of things, but never dreamed that finally reaching my goal of having European employment would result in me also experiencing record setting personal career lows at the same time.

Is it me? Is it the company? Is it the customer? Is it the industry?

Yes to all of those questions. The company is bollocks; it always has been. I've always rationalized that it was really no better in another company, particularly within the industry. I still believe that.

My customer? For the first time ever in my life I'm dealing with a customer that I'm having trouble respecting. I can appreciate a demanding customer. I'm a demanding customer. But, my customer has proven to be overwhelming. I won't go into gobs of detail (I really don't feel like stooping to that level. Besides I wouldn't feel much better anyway, though it is always fun to say the phrase "complete jerk offs"), and in fairness, they've certainly had justification for being dissatisfied with my company and myself.

That said, the constant browbeating that we've taken has been excessive. I tend to take these things personally, and it gets old real quick.

Each time I've hit a low, however, I search and search and find a way to dig back out. The summer was pretty tough, but I got through it. It's starting to get tough again, and I know I can get through it.

It's no secret how I do it, really. It's always back to basics: music, friends and family, and myself. I'll keep the religion low key. While my mantra "keep the faith" encompasses my personal religious beliefs to some extent, I use it more for the motivation on all fronts. It's finding something to believe in. It's the best way this punk has found to keep it DIY.

On the music front, I've had quite a bit to be psyched up about lately. A couple of weeks ago, I slipped in to a small club to see my friend Goran play a Simonout show. They've spent the summer doing some sizable festivals around Europe, and the band is certainly getting tighter. It's really quite a good show to see, and I'm looking forward to their album release, hopefully scheduled for November or December.

Goran and I always talk music when we see one another (he gets into the pub once in awhile). Whether it be about Pulp or Bob Dylan, it's nice to hear things from the perspective of a musician; sometimes it's a bit better of a conversation than simply, "I like the song because you can dance to it."

There's certainly room for songs that you can dance to, and I appreciate it when someone can make the remark that they do like the song because of a specific element, whether that be the driving beat, the chilling piano, the haunting lyrics, or whatever.

Lately I've been listening to a lot of Course of Empire, partly because of the great memories I had of seeing show after show, but also because it's just good music. It's funny how listening to one band can trigger a thought, and I found myself hitting the internet searching for other bands from the same era.

Almost by accident (actually it was because I'd just loaded a few tracks from a Tim compilation onto iTunes, heard a song I hadn't listened to in a while, and then quickly went on line), I found some old 12 inches on the industrial front. Some of it is a bit darker and harder, some of it is a bit more electronica. I'm particularly thrilled that last Saturday, I found some really rare Secession, a Scottish synth band from the mid 80s. I absolutely went nuts trying to find their one CD release about 18 years ago, and I've treasured that CD ever since. Now, I've got a bunch of additional gems that I never thought I'd find.

Besides Secession, I dug really deep and found some Robotico Rejekto and Cetu Javu. Ironically, both of these bands are German, but Cetu Javu is a bit unique in that their lead singer is Spanish, and now teaches at a university in Hannover. (gotta love Wikipedia, eh?)

I'm sure my iTunes library is experiencing all sorts of confusion, as suddenly the heavy punk stuff is getting mixed with quite a few extended versions of 20 year old electronica. Just when you're saying, "well hell, let's have a party," someone comes forward and suggests just that.

My German teacher had a look at my stuff the other day, and asked if I would make her some mixes for the pub's "end of summer" party which will be held this coming Saturday. We spent a few hours compiling a song list, and I discovered that I already had a fair amount of what she wanted. Okay, I never thought I would be downloading an Ace of Base song or Ricky Martin, for that matter, but it's her party. I'm just sorting the track order and burning the discs.

At any rate, it's been great rediscovering some excellent excellent stuff. My office colleague has been forced to listen to a few things that are outside of his tastes, but that's what happens sometimes. Don't stop the music.

I'm quite fortunate to have some pretty great friends that constantly support me from various parts of the world, particularly the states. In Germany, you are pretty much a Bekannte for a period of time. Eventually (say a year or two), you might become friends. At least that's what a lot of the culture books say.

I can appreciate this to some extent, but am always a little unsure of how or where I stand. I've had some good chats with some of the English speaking regulars in the pub, particularly those of us who have our own code in the POS system, and I do feel a part of things, accepted. That's all well and good; it's particularly nice to be able to interact with the neighborhood and its residents.

Obviously I know a fair amount of Germans after living here for 10 months, and consider several of them friends. Initially, I perceived that people were being a bit cautious, but over the past months they have seemed to warmed up. However, with the exception of Stefan, the guy I've known longest, I'm not exactly sure if these others actually consider me to be a friend, or merely a really good acquaintance.

A couple of months ago, during one of the rougher weeks I had in summer, I happened to meet a girl that left a pretty good impression. We had a few beers together and a really nice conversation. I left the pub that evening feeling better than I had in weeks.

Though she said she'd come back to the pub a couple of weeks later (after a business trip), I was still surprised when she showed up, but again, we had a nice evening chatting about all sorts of things. Each Tuesday evening since, we've tended to hang out at the pub together.

I must say it's been pretty great, and exactly what I needed in Frankfurt, particularly with the amount of unpleasantness associated with my work. At least outside of work things are much better.

Strangely, I really have no idea how this girl feels about me. Since my love life can pretty much be summed up track for track in the album "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" by the Bouncing Souls, I think I prefer to stay as naive as possible about that situation.

Right about now Moe is saying, "Bupkis."

I don't have a great response to that, other than that the girl Simone is simply too special to me; there's no pressing need to run off and try to force something that may or may not be meant to be.

She was out of town this past weekend, but I look forward to giving her a big hug when I see her tomorrow night.

So, besides the music and the friends, I keep looking for any reason to smile. Don't take this to be an act of desperation, it's just that sometimes it's a bit challenging to find the humor during rough spots, so you have to look a little harder.

Next to afore mentioned girl whose name is difficult for me to pronounce, the biggest reason I'm finding to smile right now is Arsenal football. The team is playing so well and so attractively. English press tends to be a pretty fair weather outfit; most of last season was filled with reports of how poorly Arsenal were playing, that they were lost without the efforts of Thierry Henry, etc. It certainly got old reading that press, particularly since the club were really not playing all that well.

It's early in the season, but Arsenal are showing real signs of maturity. The average age of the club is still quite young, but kudos to their manager for putting his faith into building a club that can do some wonderful things. The English press is once again using all kinds of superlatives to describe the quality of play that Arsenal are demonstrating. Indeed, it's certainly worth a subscription to Fox Soccer Channel (for those statesiders that don't already have it). I have to rely on a few pubs around town to ensure that I'm seeing matches. I missed Saturday's match (caught the highlights off the internet), but I found out that an Albanian bar in the city showed the match, so I'll add that to the list of venues that are possible matchday options.

Other random smiles are coming fairly frequently, thank goodness.

During the morning commutes, the trains tend to be pretty full, and Darmstadt is a pretty busy stop. Thus, when we all get off the train, we move as a large mass up the stairs, which becomes a bit complicated because there's always one or two people trying to get down the stairs to catch the departing train, and almost always someone has a bicycle.

It goes without saying that you kind of have to watch your step, much the way you do at a crowded concert or sporting event in a large stadium. Unlike the stadium, where the aisles are only big enough to allow two people to walk, the stairs at the train station allow for about 8 people across. Basically, if you trip and fall forward, you'll potentially knock everyone down in front of you; you fall "up the steps." Likewise, if you fall backwards, you've basically just fucked everyone behind you.

I've been waiting all year to see an accident, not because I like to see (not much, anyway) people experience pain, but because I wanted to see how big the domino effect would be.

Last week, I was walking beside three guys and one of them suddenly went, "Oh! Oh!" and I realized that he had tripped and was falling forward. He grabbed on to the first thing he could, which happened to be the girl in front of him. She started to fall forward, but the guy just needed to stabilize, so he managed to hold himself up as well as the girl. In the end, we all started laughing because it was such a close call: had he tripped into me and all four of us guys fallen backwards, we would have knocked over close to 25 people.

OK, maybe this is where I have to say, "maybe you had to be there" to appreciate the humor in the situation.

Wow, it's about all I can do to get this piece finished up. It's taken way too long, and covers a few too many topics. Furthermore, I started this last Friday, and am just now finishing it up. The party at the pub Saturday night was pretty successful. Certainly the music was excellent, and once again, I probably should have skipped the tequila shots (or was it the combination of pils and chupitos?). Sunday was spent sleeping and trying to not think about the return to Monday work.

Today, it's business as usual. Loads of emails, a handful of meetings and the excitement of some plumping problem in the mens' restroom.

keep the faith

bryan

Underground Rock DJs - Left of the Dial

I'm really missing music right now. There's a noticeable emptiness in my life without a piano, and that's been particularly frustrating as of late. Of course, should I find myself sitting down with an opportunity to play, I think I'd prefer to do so in the privacy of a sound proof room so as not to give anyone other than myself the chance to hear how horribly I probably play after a year's hiatus.

Sure, there's a guitar sitting in my living room, and it has sat there quietly for the past few months as I've been mucking around with work and everything else. Guitar has never come easily to me, but it sure came better when I actually played regularly.

I miss singing in the Alboraya choir, too. Lynne has had a few concerts throughout this year, and I always liked hearing the reports; a chance to live vicariously.

Fortunately, it's not been a total disaster. I've finally loaded my laptop with a couple of gig worth of music and that's been a real benefit. A friend told me about a little PC subwoofer system he bought for 30 Euros, and I found it to be excellent. It may not be the best way for me to have music floating around (I'd much prefer the wall of sound stereo components), but it's certainly filling the void.

Though I've got a buddy who does play locally in Frankfurt (this Saturday is his next show), I've not seen too many shows. However, I have seen a couple, and have also had several nice discussions about lots of different music groups and styles.

From those discussions, I've listened to some stuff I never would have discovered otherwise, and on the flip side, I've got a few people listening to Alkaline Trio and Course of Empire around Bornheim. That's flippin' cool.

One of my goals for the year was to get a few more CDs played on the stereo in the pub. Once the pub reopened under Ray, I was able to slip a few things into the changer, and I'm personally glad about a double disc of Alkaline Trio that's made it into rotation on a semi regular basis.

But, it seems that a lot of folks like a bit more fiddly type music in an Irish pub. My argument that we could just play more Flogging Molly and the Dropkick Murphys met with a bit of push back; the idea is not to have the music force the patrons to go to another establishment.

After listening to some of the more mainstream selections the pub was playing, I realized that I might have the perfect CD lying around: a four CD compilation of music we referred to as "underground" back at the end of the 80s and early 90s. While there are several popular songs on the comp, the majority of the songs really make you say, "wow, I always liked that song but just didn't hear it that much."

Certainly, this stuff didn't really have a big place on the radio airwaves, especially after George Gimarc left Dallas radio. Since that was way before Internet radio, we were forced to keep trading music tips amongst ourselves. That went really well until we got more and more busy with jobs and families and stuff and had less time to peruse the diminishing alternative record stores about.

Last Friday when the light bulb went on, I scrounged around in my drawer and found my CD which has this tasty compilation, then took it over to the pub and asked Ray to play it some time. He put it in immediately, and without further ado, people were sort of perking up saying, "wow, what's this?"

Several hours later, I told John how pleased I was that my CD was still playing. I was a bit nervous, since after the four Cd's of 80s rock there were two discs of some pretty lively punk (under the compilation known as "rock against bush") and didn't want the barman to get riled up. Sometimes punk is perfect in the pub, and other times even I'll admit that perhaps we should listen to something else.

I was the last man standing at the pub that night, due in part to the cool music and due in part to the good crowd at the pub that night. Stefan was around, John was there, I had a cool chat with Nathalie (she, like John, has been recently introduced to COE), and Simone came in with her sister and a friend. All in all, quite the nice evening.

In fact, the evening went a bit too well. I spent most of Saturday trying to get motivated to get out of bed. I skipped the gym, the shopping, and all the other stuff I had planned to do, and tried to remember if I'd really had a shot of tequila or not.

I did get to the store for milk and bread before I had my German class, then proceeded to get a real schooling in Genativ, Dativ, and Akkusativ: it's the German version of the subjunctive in Spanish. Talk about really difficult...

At the close of class, Ninjaa and I walked next door to have a drink, and ran into Max, Heike and Stefan, who all helped me to pronounce the name Simone. You'd think this wouldn't be that difficult for me, but as it turns out, I've been butchering this poor girl's name, and frankly, I'm embarrassed. (I would like to point out that it's my tendency to use Spanish pronunciation with a lot of German words; I'm struggling to break that habit)

I'd intended to have only one guinness, but that led to a second, then a third. Why? The tunes were super groovy, okay? I looked down to the end of the bar to see Ninjaa singing along to a Sisters of Mercy track, and then watched her get even more psyched up when Joy Division came on. Gotta love it.

Stefan talked me into heading down the street to our old standby, Sugar. There, we had a few margaritas each, and that right there would have made for a nice Saturday night. We had all the intentions of calling it a night, but then we ran into Abu, who told us that we should go down to a place called Chameleon (Karma Karma). Why not?

The place was supposedly just a few more meters down Berger Strasse, but just when we thought we weren't going to be to find it, we rounded a corner to see a bouncer standing outside the bar.

Inside we went, telling each other we'd each have a beer, then get on home. Abu appeared out of nowhere, then Howie (a German regular at the pub who happens to love John Hughes films) showed up and invited us to, er, a couple of shots of Jagermeister.

I really think had we stopped after the one shot, I would have been OK, but caution was flapping around in a gale storm, so of course we had another shot or two along with a few beers.

Stefan danced, and Howie and I exchanged a few "Bueller? Bueller?"s with each other.

Finally I came to my senses and signalled Stefan. It was time to go.

All right, that meant that Stefan agressively tried to push the door open to get out of the club; unfortunately the doors opened in, much to the irritation of the bouncer.

Out on the street, I immediately headed in the wrong direction, and Stefan pointed the right way. We staggered back down the street, and what should have been a simple 3 minute walk seemed to take quite a bit longer. During this time, Stefan talked to a bush, took a leak on some flowers, and misinterpreted a passerby's suggestion that "you shouldn't piss on the flowers; it's a 20 Euro fine" for a sexual solicitation, which prompted him to make a remark, which then set off the passerby, who was certainly not into that.

For a moment, I thought we'd have a bit of trouble, which none of us really wanted. It was more comical than anything else, and very much out of character, the agressive remarks, that is.

I had a quiet word with the stranger, and the scene melted into nothing.

Stefan and I stopped for a cigarette outside of the Irish pub, before I declined Stefan's invitation to sit down at an empty table. It was 5am, and time for bed.

Sunday, I couldn't feel my face. I don't know how I got up to watch the Arsenal match, and I'm not really sure that an Irish breakfast was a real good idea. Arsenal played well, and after the third score, another patron murmured, "Wow, that's real enthusiasm, Bryan," as I continued to sit there.

"There's really no reason to yell," I responded, and went on to explain that I'd had a rough night.

After the match, I thought I'd head to the gym, but ended up sitting at home watching Kids Incorporated on YouTube for a couple of hours before finally collapsing on the couch to watch a James Bond film on TV.

Monday came well enough, but I couldn't seem to get out of the house. At 8.30, I forced myself down the street to the U-Bahn, passing the Gelato shop that some people I know own. "Wow, looks like someone poured petrol on their patio furniture and torched it," I thought to myself while waiting a couple of extra moments to light a cigarette.

The work day was a catastrophe, but I got through, and willed myself into the gym, where I had a pathetic workout. I gave up after an hour, and headed for home.

As I passed the same Gelato shop (now without any furniture in front), I decided I'd better have a chicken salad for dinner, so trudged into the pub (like I'd actually have lettuce in my house!) where I found Stefan sitting at the bar.

We had a few chuckles as we compared stories from Sunday and Monday. Stefan remarked that I looked like shit, and of course I replied that I ALWAYS look like that. I did have a nice salad, then finished with brandy and port to hopefully settle my stomach, which was still feeling a bit unfriendly.

With PreFabSprout playing in the background, Ray told me that, indeed, a disgruntled guy who used to live above the Gelato shop had poured gasoline on the outdoor furniture and set fire to it around 3am the night before.

On the positive side, the temperature here is dropping into the high 40s at night, so not too many people are sitting outside; autumn is here. (On the not so positive side..HOLY SHIT, somebody burned something down in my neighborhood!)

So that's how my September has started. Hessen is quickly becoming a non smoking region. Those of you on the anti-smoke campaign can be happy that I've not been sneaking any more smokes on the trains.

It'd be nice if my work permit was back in force, but apparently it's going to take several weeks. That's not too cool, but we'll figure something out. Hopefully.

It strikes me that given my present residence/work situation, perhaps it wasn't such a good idea to go out two night on the trot and tie one on. However, I'm thinking it was EXACTLY what I needed.

So Stefan, vergißt du nichts Coconuts, Tanzen, und that Nancy Sinatra song, "Strawberries, Cherries, and ..."

Remember the tunes, listen to the tunes, and Alles wird gut.

keep the faith

bryan

iPods, song requests, and Advil can be sent to me at my address in Frankfurt.