Monday, January 26, 2009

Coolness within R---------

I'm too tired to think of a made-up name for the village I'm staying in, so I've adopted the Victorian convention of starting the name with a letter (which in this case is not the correct one), and ending it with a line.

So. The little tram station that I wait at to go in to Frankfurt is a whole lot like the TRAXX stations in Salt Lake City, but because it is in Germany, it is cooler. Also, the trains are red, or at least the ones that come here are, and that makes it even more cool. And picturesque. I should take a picture, speaking of which.

The city library is so close to the tram station that it could BE the tram station if it were not the library. In fact, I'm not really sure why they have a library where by rights the train station ought to be, though I do know that there is a little counter where a man sits and sells tickets in person instead of by machine, in a little teeny building off to the side of the library. No, not phone-booth tiny. Garden shed tiny.

The local recreation center is currently celebrating a birthday over 100 years. They were selling commemorative t-shirts, which I noticed as we were going out after going to the sport-for-under-threes at said recreation center. Wow.

Conversation with a child in my class (the one I'm volunteering in) who shall be known as S:

S (giving me a puzzled, yet not unfriendly, look): Where do you live?
Me: Near the plant store.
S: I don't know where the plant store is.
Me: Well, then near the [here I struggle, and fail, to find the word for "train station"]. Or, the library. Do you know where the library is?
S: Yeah.
Me: I live at near the library.
S: But I've never seen you there.
Me: Ah, well, I only visit the library, and you only visit the library, so maybe that's why you haven't seen me there. I don't live in the library, I live in near the library.
S: But I haven't seen you there.
Me: [Not for the first time nor for the last, I have no reply that I can say in German.]

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