Nightlife, Wildlife, Afterlife

Night life
Saarland University (Go Owls!?) has over 17,000 students, but because most students live at home (see last post on local housing issues) it doesn’t feel like a college town.
There is one popular pub with college students called SaarBrooklyn, but since the legal drinking age is 16 (14 when accompanied by a Custodial Person), most of the cool pubs are filled with that age group, so it’s maybe more of a high school town.
We hear them, the high schoolers, being less than rowdy on the weekends outside our window on the platz (square).   Guess it’s awkward to drink with a Custodial Person.
Wild life
In Los Angeles, it was not unusual to see coyotes at least a few times a week, raccoons, skunks, opossums regularly and rarely deer.  Unexpectedly, in more rural Eugene, Oregon we see lots of ducks (Go Ducks!), and sometimes, but rarely, raccoons and opossums.  Weirdly, in Saarbrucken, an area surrounded by woods, spotting animal life has been disappointing.   We’ve seen a few small bats at dusk, similar to the bats we would see in LA at that time of day. We’ve seen some Egyptian ducks, like we saw in Tel Aviv (Go Egyptian Ducks!). There are pigeons here that are bigger, prettier with longer necks (it’s an actual pigeon breed called the Saar pigeon), but they are not pervasive like most cities And, one sighting of a banana slug (Go UC Santa Cruz!). But we haven’t even seen any squirrels, except weirdly this painting in our Airbnb (that’s nuts).

It just confirms LA has the best wildlife, unless maybe you’re a high schooler in Saarbrucken without a Custodial Person.

What we have seen a lot of here are wasps, but I guess it’s been that way since Martin Luther.




Wild Night Life
We have heard fireworks at night, randomly in the middle of the week, weekends, not sure of the origin, maybe some magic does occasionally happen at one of the brothels?

















After Life If you don\’t survive the nightlife or the wildlife, not a problem as you\’re well taken care of in the afterlife.

This week’s photo of topless old man looking out window contemplating his life. “Damn, I’ll be 50 next year!” 

House-Hunters

Our daughter (A) and family (W and I) have been living in temporary housing provided by W’s work, the Max Planck Institute and it ends this month. Surprisingly, for a university town, housing options seem to be limited.People, in general, live in their rented apartments for decades.Like HGTV House Hunters, our daughter’s family considered; three housing opportunities.  However, unlike an episode of House Hunters, the decision was made before the opening credits finished, preventing the mid-episode discussion over coffee at a cute cafe/beer at the hip pub. Of the three options; one was already rented, one didn’t allow dogs, and so it left them with one choice
So we have made the rounds of the German equivalents to Home Depot (Hornbach’s), Lowe’s (Bauhaus), Walmart (Real) and Kmart (TeDox).Nothing extremely inspiring with the exception of wall of toilet seats;

plus the cheesecake and the best milchcaffee yet at the exceptional Hornbach’s cafe and bakery 

Ultimately, they probably will just go buy everything at the local Ikea (an actual Ikea) in neighboring Saarlouis.

 
This week’s photo of topless old man looking out window contemplating his life.

Saarbrucken down

Staying in the same place for an extended period of time, like we are in Saarbrucken while Alivia gets settled, gets you in a rhythm.  You start to see the same people on their own daily routines of going to work or school, walking their dogs, and shopping. We  see the same cashier at the local Reve grocery store who recognizes us because we’re there almost daily to refill your tiny college dorm style refrigerator. At least she doesn’t ask us for ID anymore with our credit card.You start to notice other things in the neighborhood as well like litter and recycling.  Litter=very little, in Los Angeles and Eugene the second most common litter we would see (the first being those small plastic marijuana canisters) were individual dental floss picks which made us wonder how someone so plaque conscientious could be so environmentally unconscientious.  We finally saw one here on the street.Recycling is pretty good here with multiple communal drop off sites for paper, clothes and glass separated by color.

The remaining home trash goes in to trash box with a lock, because you are charged by the trash’s weight So you can’t put your dog’s poop bag in your neighbor’s can if it is locked. .There is a fair amount of graffiti here, but it is more sophisticated to us because it is in a language we can’t understand. “Tut” is German for does, and “Smor” is Swedish for Butter. 

  
From what we can tell, Saarbrucken has a large Catholic population (due to its proximity to France?).  We’ve noticed almost every house on the front door has this- which represents the year 2018 and CMB stands for  Christus Mansionem Benedicat, the Latin words meaning, “May Christ bless this home”.
The parish we are staying in is St.Thomas Morus (More in English). We went to the big church flea market last weekend.  St. Thomas More is the patron saint of difficult marriages, large families, stepparents, adopted children, widowers, politicians and lawyers.  With that lineup it was appropriate that when we went on a gray dreary drizzling Saturday morning, there were only a few pathetic booths and an anemic turnout.  We were looking for something for Alivia’s new apartment but all we got was a little Morus depressed.

Speaking of politicians,  there’s also a refreshing calmness here away from the constant tension and bombardment of Trump/US political news.   Everyday in the US, it felt omnipresent and palpable. We try to keep up but it feels less stressful because it’s not a shared experience with our neighbors.  The nine-hour time difference and lack of MSNBC contributes to the weaning.  Combined with our last minute frantic packing and locking up of our valuables it felt like we have escaped Nazi America for Germany. We’ve only spoken politics with two people here, both very anti-Trump, so it wasn’t surprising to see this piñata at our local Woolworths’s (yes, we still shop at Woolworth’s)

This week’s photo of topless old man looking out window contemplating his life -waiting for his yellow bath towel to dry while he endures a room temperature beer in his darkened room.