well those were the words I learnt as a child.
Sunday was a busy day, I was double booked. I had already said yes to going to the theatre with my neighbour K, when my American friend KM decided to celebrate July 4th on July 1st, it makes me smile to think that she planned to celebrate early just to irritate the Germans who would be invited* but in reality it was better planning to party on a Sunday afternoon than a Wednesday evening.
The Independence Day celebrations kicked off at 3pm which gave me only an hour to eat as much American themed food as possible and chat to my friends. Such a shame that in the first hour there were only sweet things to eat (please note the heavy irony) chocolate brownies with an undernote of cloves (I shall have to wangle the recipe out of KM somehow) rice crispy squares which I haven't made since forever but which are just as yummy light years later and you couldn't taste the O neg at all**. I left just as the barbie was being fired up, meaning that I missed the burnt offerings and the small child trying to swim in the pond (a highlight for Jas, despite the fact that she didn't even witness it).
The show that my neighbour, K, and I had tickets for, was the Düsseldorf Amateur Dramatic Society (or whatever the equivalent is here in Germany) offering of Jesus Christ Superstar. They do a show every year, last year was Evita and next year is Jekyl and Hyde***, and I have to confess to some trepidation, afterall some amateur shows can be very...amateur, and I was giving up a party to sit through this.
I needn't have worried. The show was very good, Jesus was from the local Folkwang music school in Werden**** and was A-mazing, whilst Judas (the lead charcter) was a Brit. The whole show was English and the funny thing was that I could understand the Germans much better than the Brits. Jesus's enunciation was crystal clear, but Judas? Although he sang very well and had a good voice, I could hardly understand what he was saying, to the extent that I joked to K that maybe my English wasn't good enough?!I do find that it's often easier to understand foreigners speaking German than Germans, because the foreigners concentrate on getting the words out right and being understood whilst native speakers are lazy and blur their words, I hasten to add that this is surely not just with German, I am quite sure this is true of all languages.
* possibly the biggest party sin of all time is to celebrate before the date, as I have previously banged on about, it's unlucky, yeah yeah, walking under ladders I can understand (something might drop on your head) but the number 13 or wishing someone happy birthday the day before their birthdate? Nope, doesnot compute!
** there was a major catastrophe on the Saturday when KM attempted to cut a rice crispy block into smaller, mouthsized pieces, straight out of the fridge, the rice crispies proved resistant to change and deflected the knife blade into KM's wrist, there were by all accounts, rivers of blood and only the fact they they have a close friend who is a doctor and who came by and glued KM back together, kept the party planning on track and KM out of the ER.
*** wasn't aware that that was a musical, learn something new every day, don't you?
**** which makes him sound as though he was a kid of 17/18, he wasn't, in the UK you'd think he was a mature(ish) student but here in Germany the life of a Uni student can go on and on and on. I'd put him at mid 20's.
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