In Germany the strawberries are in season in June. This fact has taken a bit of time to sink in for me because in Florida, March is strawberry month for me. But I’m a believer now. Although Florida strawberries are the best, hands down.

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This weather has been down right depressive in Bavaria. For real, is this June? Is any one willing to spare a ray or two of sunshine? °°°
I forced myself and Alex to do a 40k bike ride this past Sunday. We avoided a potential deluge by heading north to Garching instead of south. I’m not a fan of northbound treks because the terrain is flat and that means we’ll be speeding to get any kind of heart rate going. And man did we fly.

We checked out Alex’s old stomping ground and made a pit stop at the Taxi Pizza and gobble down a Mexikana (made with kidney beans and corn) - the first German pizza I ever tasted. There’s lots of sprinkled chili flakes on the pizza that make your lips burn hours later.

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So I think I’m in love. Oh Yes -with the new Coldplay album, Viva La Vida. Like I’ve awoken from a music coma and have the urge to bob my head in a ‘hell yeah’ -okay maybe not like that, give a girl a break, it was coma.

It’s been a while since I’ve bought an entire album and felt that floaty, whoa feeling. It sounds like the band had a lot of fun making this album. Way to go, guys.

But maybe I’m partial to sounds that veer off the predictable path just at the right moment. Who doesn’t like ear candy, Gretel? And still I find it cool that these songs manage to tickle the familiar by captivating the energy of earlier U2 and incorporate some of that instrumental butter I’ve gone gaga for from Explosions in the Sky. I couldn’t help but think of John Lennon’s “Imagine” as I first heard Coldplay’s “42″, and that’s not a bad thing. Yeah, the piano motif. Can you hear it too?

Viva La Vida cuts through the dreariness blanketing Munich on this June day. The sky could be blue. But I don’t mind. so much..

Artist: Coldplay
Album: Viva La Vida
Title: Strawberry Swing

I shouldn’t be writing. My qualifying homework is due in a week (qualifying in that if you don’t turn it in or get at least 50/100 right, you don’t take the written final or in German: Klausur) and although things are steadily coming along *whew*, I don’t want any *uck ups.

But I can’t escape the apartment just yet. The dishwasher is running and I’m not allowed to leave in fear that the tiny squirrel living behind the dishwasher (or what have you) will gnaw through the waterline and cause havoc for us and our neighbors. Home insurance doesn’t cover absence and mysterious squirrel gnawing activity. So that’s why I’m going to write about my ‘Eurovision Song Contest Finale’ experience. My first and maybe my last.

Alex was down, immune system-wise, on Friday and I caught the drag on Saturday evening. Oh how I wished I spent the evening with seasoned Eurovisioners but I turned down Jul’s invite to a Eurovision bonanza just in case my sore throat was infectious. But I promised I’d watch the song contest with a cup of hot tea. So more or less, my take: (a little late posting but oh well!)

Confusion:

It’s called Eurovision. I’m assuming standing for European television? Yet Israel is a participant. Not that I’m complaining, but isn’t this country technically in Western Asia. And where’s Italy in this contest? Maybe they could extend the contest to India. bollywood would rock!

The Positives:

1. I really like the logo. Sexy. Musical. Way to go Serbia,
2. a great opportunity for a geography lesson. Where’s San Marino? Azerbaijan?
3. who doesn’t like listening to different accents,
4. when a country wasn’t selling out to make a mainstream buck (Greece, Russia) it was really quite enjoyable to hear songs that may even be sung by the actual country folk (or not, Poland or Greece)

The Negatives:

1. this song contest is the epitome of processed cheese in a box,
2. how many poppy, techno songs can you squeeze into an evening? blech,
3. voting for the best song isn’t about the song -it’s based on moronic stuff like national pride. But hey, who cares,
4. Germany should drop out of the contest, permanently. No Angel was horrible. Latvia’s Pirates of the Sea, can you believe it, were far better.

To sum it up:

total weirdness. Russia won with the help of R&B producer Timbaland and Olympic figure skating champion Evgeni Plushenko skating on plastic. France sang a song with only 13 French words in it, the rest in English, wtf. To make up for this fact, the French announcer, who doled out the points tallied in France, spoke in Serbian instead of English. There was a common theme of light versus dark, maybe good versus evil going on (i.e.,Azerbaijan and Georgia), eh, but let me not get any deeper than that. I’m up in ‘nough cheese already.

Who I liked:

• Azerbaijan and Finland’s entries for their eccentricity. But you can’t listen to this music alone without seeing the act. search youtube, it’s there in multiple forms,
• the singer for Denmark was a cutie. He also wants to be a cop. oooh
• and some of my favorites are here for you to listen to: Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and France

Artist: Mor ve Ötesi
Album: Eurovision Song Contest 2008
Title: Deli (Crazy)

Artist: Laka
Title: Pokusaj

Artist: Sebastien Tellier
Album: Sexuality
Title: Divine

With a two-week, constant sore throat it finally dawned on me that perhaps I should slow down. This hasn’t been easy because for (1) we’ve been living for the last month without an automobile and (2) I have finally found the ‘energy’ to do everything. From taking up tango, clubbing at the pretensious Null, Acht, Neun, planning day trips to places like Nürnberg (Nuremberg), bike riding to the Schäflarn Monastery, attending a Gypsy Jazz concert, spending weekday dinners at friends’ houses, and traveling to Nürnberg for an evening lecture on an introduction to Business Informatics and back - it’s all been marvelously satisfying and challenging.

That is only half the energy consumption. It is hard not to be distracted by my passions for cooking (we actually have a better oven = bread making), battling with the German way of knitting (faster but prettier?, not sure.) and reading a krimi-novel in German (I’m over it now that I don’t get the deeper meaning. It will come.) Unfortunately, my allergies this year seem to be getting stronger and my immune system is working over time. At some point something has got to give.

I regret a little that I blog about ‘this and that’ so infrequently. Even today we planned a last minute, 90-km, round-trip bike ride to Lake Starnberg (now botched), which would have cut into another trusted blogging bonanza. I have much to recount, impressions to muddle about. All memories once fresh are now lost in my Gedanken soup. Yet life goes on, blogging or no blogging. I wish I could account it all to you dear Readers yet we both know that is probably improbable with this to-do list of mine. From my perspective I can sum up so: life is happy and coming close to ideal as I hope it to be. I hope it is too in your neck of the woods.