“Yippie Yah Yei Schweinebacke!”

Ok, so I thought I’d be done posting about Germany, but I keep remembering so many good things I learned that need to be shared. I guess this discussion works for American movies brought to Europe in general.

I do not think I need to explain that many English films get dubbed when they go abroad (not all though, many just have subtitles). Well, since I typically do not understand the dubbing I just watch and laugh because it sounds funnier in another language, and in the case of a piece of crap film like Twilight, the French version was actually better because the actors/ACTRESS actually had some emotion in their voices (see note below on why I was watching Twilight).

Anyway, John the German and I were discussing the Die Hard films on day and he dropped this phrase on me: “Yippie Yah Yei Schweinebacke!” I asked him to repeat it and I said, “Ha! It rhymes!” He was confused because those phrases obviously do not rhyme, but then I explained the English version. I needed to know, “What does ‘Schweinebacke’ mean?” Turns out, this traditional German insult means “pig cheek.” This led to a good long laugh for me. I am not sure exactly why this translation tickled my fancy so much. Perhaps it was the good fortune that there is actually a phrase in German that mimics the sound of the English version,

or that the insult is strange, or that it just seems so innocent compared to the much more offensive English phrase. Oh! On a side note, there is a funny site called “Thumbs and Ammo” where they photo-shopped the guns out of scenes from action films and replaced them with a thumbs-up! Some are pretty hilarious and inspired me to make this gem combining the German phrase and one of their images.

Die Hard, rated G for all ages!

In addition to movies being dubbed, the titles are often changed. Sometimes it is a literal translation into the other language, or they are changed and added to. Brokeback Mountain, for example, becomes Le Secret de Brokeback Mountain. In other cases they keep the title in English, but change the phrase. I have not found a good explanation for why they do this exactly. It seems that the titles which receive this treatment might simply be difficult to translate or they do not have an equivalent word in that language. For example, Step Up became Sexy Dance and The Hangover became Very Bad Trip (it seems crazy the French do not have a word for ‘hangover,’ instead they say someone had ‘too much wine’).

Hopefully this was not overly boring for those of you who are not into films. As a movie lover, and I suppose as an anthropologist, I find it fascinating to see which aspects of films and movie culture are exported and modified to fit a different culture. The best part is, there is always something new to discover or learn about this because there are always new TV shows and films entering the movie world!

**Oh! And as for watching Twilight. This was two years ago, I believe, when I was staying with a friend in Dijon. She had to work for the day and I wanted to practice listening to French. I looked at her movie collection and thought, “Which of these is going to have a simple story line and basic dialogue which I may be able to understand…” Well, it proved to be that one! The funniest part was that after about an hour and a half of listening to and reading subtitles in the French, I became tired and switched back to English. I regretted it immediately. My god, the French made the film bearable because the actors actually had some feeling in their voices, but the original film…my god…how on earth were they allowed to make four of these movies?**

A Visit to Glauberg

Two weekends ago I had the opportunity to take a trip to a little village called Glauberg. The village today is quite small and really has nothing significant to it as far as I know, but the hill which lies behind was home to an oppidum (a fortified settlement, typically found on a hilltop or defensible location) during the Iron Age. In addition to the settlement, a large rampart and multiple burial mounds were found around the hill too.

To get to the site, The German (whom I will now call John as this is his new nickname from me) and I had to take a train to Frankfurt from Mainz, and then another train from Frankfurt to Glauberg. We were quite lucky with our first trains – one was nearly brand new and still had the fresh scent to it! It took about two hours to get out there and luckily the ride was pleasant and we even saw some deer!

We arrived in the little village which is located at the foot of the large hill. We started working our way through the village and followed a muddy path up the hill, parallel to some freshly turned fields waiting for new crops. It was a bit tricky getting up because, well, my studious bum has been planted in a chair for the past few months, so to say I am out of shape is an understatement to say the least, but also we have had so much rain and snow in Germany this spring that everything is a bit muddy and soft in general. We made it to the top nonetheless and had to spend about five minutes cleaning the mud off of our shoes before entering the museum.

Sometimes referred to as the Mickey Mouse statue

Visiting the museum first seemed to be the best option because the weather was questionable and it sprinkled a bit while we climbed the hill. The museum, opened in the late 2000s, was not very large, but it holds most of the finds recovered from the excavations, including the famous princely burial in one of the mounds. This find was rather famous in the world of European archaeology. Statues and sculptures are typically rare prior to the Roman Period, so to find this incredible, life-size sculpture associated with one of these wealthy burials was an exceptional find to say the least. It is believed that sculptures like these were found on top of the burial mounds and served as a form of grave marker.

In addition to the sculpture, many marvelous objects were found in the burial mound of the prince. These objects are also exceptional, well, the whole situation is exceptional, because the objects found in the grave are also found on the sculpture itself. This very close connection between the sculpture, the objects, and the burial, allow archaeologists to argue that the sculpture depicts the man found in the grave with these items. This is not something that happens very often in the world of European archaeology.

See? See? Too cool! A matching sword and a shield were also discovered.

I should also mention that these mounds are not simply small little bumps in the landscape that just cover the body. Some of these are several meters high, and tens of meters wide (the princess burial at Vix where I excavate is estimated to be at least forty meters wide!). This is the princely burial of Glauberg.

The sun decided to come out the moment I snapped this photo and I could not be more grateful! As the weather turned around, we decided it was a good time to see the archaeological park which had visible ruins from the Iron Age to the Medieval Period that have been excavated from the early 20^th century to the more recent times. The Iron Age ramparts were a highlight as well as many ruins of medieval houses and castle structures. It took about an hour or so to walk around the area, and while there may have been more to see, the sun seemed to want to retire for the night and I did not want to walk down the hill in the dark.

Nothing really remarkable happened on the way back, other than these two fat cats sitting in a window wanting to get in.

These fat cats make Mea look really thin...and less grouchy.

On the train ride from Frankfurt to Mainz I was blessed with the opportunity to listen to some German skaterpunk teens rap in English for a bit and then switch to raping about how awesome Frankfurt was in German. I use blessed sarcastically here. I survived and had a Schlappeseppel when I got back. Boy will I miss that beer.

Today was my last day in Mainz and I am actually finishing this post on the bus headed for Dijon. New country, new work, and new adventures await! Until we meet again, Germany!

Being An Archaeologist Isn’t Always Glamorous: Part Deux

From the research that brought you Being An Archeologist Isn’t Always Glamorous…  comes the thrilling sequel Being An Archaeologist Isn’t Always Glamorous: Part Deux! The location, Mainz. The cast, tripled! The weather, unpredictable. The commute, longer. The research, even less thrilling!

I have not written in much detail about what I am doing in Mainz for a month because there is really not much to tell. I arrived on *March February 25^th and settled into the museum owned guesthouse that is offered to visiting scholars for free if there is available room. I stayed there for a week, then switched to a friend’s (my friend from Vix 2011 that I referred to as The German) apartment for a week, and then back to the guesthouse.

When I have not been moving my stuff from one side of town to the other, I have been spending my days in a gigantic library. Why come all the way to Mainz for a library? Well, this library contains over 120,000 books on archaeology and history alone! Most of the publications are in various European languages (mostly German), and the focus of most of the literature is the archaeology of Europe. While we have many great libraries in the States, most of these publications are very old or difficult to come by across the pond. In short, it is a fantastic place for me to get some research done as many of the materials I need are available on site. Sometimes the reading is really great and I think, “This is just the thing I was looking for!” and other days, like today, I was almost bored to tears by a book I needed to finish and could do nothing after but watch a crappy zombie movie. Here is a highlight from Cockneys vs. Zombies:

So, on average, I am spending about eight hours a day in a library reading French. I have rather limited brain power for anything else after that. Luckily, after I arrived I realized I know several people in the city and have made new friends as well during my stay. I have been watching movies and TV shows as I do at home, and eating…a lot. I have rarely had a meal alone which is a nice change from my normal research schedule! The German has been a great host too and I have been comparing him to a Midwestern mother because he keeps making me eat! I fear I will be fat before I leave Mainz.

I have also shared some of my culinary masterpieces with The German and The Hobbit (another blogged about friend from Vix who came to town last week to visit!). As the former is an avid carnivore and the latter is a vegetarian, I tried to engineer some meals that would work for the three of our diverse food tastes. Baked gnocchi, stuffed peppers, and American-style pancakes were all successfully transferred recipes! Have not been drinking too much, though I was introduced to Schlappeseppel beer! Not only is it a delicious beer, it is a great word to say while toasting your beer (apparently the first time I tried to say it, it sounded like I already drank about five of them according to my wonderful friends)! I am trying to find a distributor in the States -- keep your eyes open!

To summarize, my time in Mainz has been spent walking from one side of town to the other, sitting in a library for eight hours a day reading French (because I cannot read German yet), visiting friends, and eating too much. All-in-all, it sounds rather boring, but each day has its highlights.

*Thanks Ami, for the correction! I am not that magical yet!

"Allez la France!"

Excavations continued this week with a little less rain finally, though we’ve still had to start and stop several times because of the weather. It has been quite cold too, which is surprising. I woke up this morning with a bit of a sore throat which has been going around the French-German team. I’m hoping it’s just because I went to bed late last night and not that I’ll actually have a cold for my last week of excavation…

The excavation itself has been a little under-whelming much to my surprise. Instead of moving many wheel-barrows full of dirt each day, I fill maybe twenty buckets of dirt in an entire day. I’ve been digging post-holes (the holes which held the framing for a house) for two weeks now and am bored to tears with it as are most of the others working at the site. These post-holes are cut into the natural soil, which is rock. I clean the dirt (mostly mud with the rain) and debris out of these to make them ready for photographing. 

It’s the same thing every day, though sometimes I get to “spice it up a bit” by cleaning a ditch instead. Some graves were found, but they are early medieval and only a few people have been excavating these. It has been quite difficult to go from being the person in charge/responsible for an area and all of its data collection and paperwork back to a person who is merely there to move dirt. I feel no connection to the site as I don’t know what is even going on here. I expressed these feelings to one of the supervisors who is responsible for all of the note-taking and it sounds like he may put me to work this week with more of the mental work, which would be a nice change. Here’s hoping. 

Despite the monotonous work, I am enjoying myself over all. We get coffee breaks and ice cream breaks which is nice. I can listen to my French lessons or music on my iPod if I like, which helps the day pass a little more quickly. If I’m actually working near others, we have entertaining conversations while we work. We were all so miserable on Friday that we wrote a song about being miserable in our ditch and it turned out quite good!

I’m not sure why, but we had the excavation party in the second week of excavations and also on a Thursday night. I haven’t been drinking much at all this excavation, probably because there is so much drinking going on around me all the time, but the others more than made up for it that night. We were divided into teams based on country (German, Austrian, Swiss, and the French legionaries which included me, some Germans and the actual French because there weren’t enough for a full team) and had to play archaeological games such as tossing a trowel into a bucket, a blindfolded girl pushing a wheel-barrow with a boy inside around a series of obstacles, and a pick-axe toss. I didn’t even want to participate, but got stuck doing the trowel toss – and no, I didn’t make any into the bucket.

After this was the wheel-barrow race. We needed three girls from each team to participate and a quick count revealed we only had two girls on the French team and I was one of them. I finally agreed to do it one minute before the race began and quickly threw on some sneakers which looked pretty funny with my dress. I got up to the wheel-barrow and got ready to start when they told me I had to be blindfolded. I was in the first race, so I didn’t know this was coming and all of the directions for the games were only given in German leaving the French team quite clueless about most of the rules. I managed to get around and back, though it’s a bit difficult when the person giving you directions speaks only French… I was thankfully finished with the games after that race. We were still short a girl and they wouldn’t let our other girl go twice, so we dressed up one of the French guys in a skirt and sweater and he played for us – we had no other options! We ended up tieing with the Austrians for third place, which was fine with us since we really didn’t care that much. We just cheered a lot and waved our baguettes, French flags and pirate flags while shouting ‘Allez la France!’ (Let’s go France!).

 Last Saturday a group of us went to Bibracte, an important archaeological site for Gallo-Roman history. We decided to change it up this week and go to the medieval city of Troyes. Before we left, The Hobbit, the French girl, our blonde German boy, and I went to the Douix and had a picnic breakfast with croissant, homemade jam, baguette, juice, and fruit. It was quite lovely and there were ducks there that day too, so they enjoyed some breakfast as well. We usually have the same breakfast every day in the cafeteria making this a nice change.

After this, we hopped into the Red Fox (a car) and were joined by our driver who looks like Sigmund Freud’s twin. We made our way through the hilly countryside to the city and spent the day walking around. As it is a medieval city, there are a lot of old buildings, many of which look like they might tip over if you leaned against them – they are very tilted and sagging, but still standing! We had some Lebanese food for lunch since there was a vegetarian with us and it seemed like the best option for all. We ate in a small park next to a fountain and then met up with another group which included TSP, another really nice German girl who I like and a few others. We visited the cathedral and after the museum which has some regional archaeological finds on display. The other group left after the museum, but our car walked around for a bit, visited some shops, and had some ice cream. It was a really perfect day from start to finish with a lot of laughing and joking, good music in the car, and perfect sunny weather. It certainly rates up there as one of my favorite days I hope to remember always. The rest of the night was pretty quiet and I got caught up in conversation with some friends until about 5AM. Overall, it was a very perfect day!

This morning was a bit rough because we were getting up early to go to another flea market. I was in the Red Fox again with ‘Freud’, TSP and the French girl. We were following the car that had the map and was supposed to know where this place was, but they somehow managed to get us lost in the woods and countryside making the drive about 45 minutes long. After we arrived, everyone walked around really quickly and wanted to leave about 15 minutes later. This happened last weekend to the French girl and I who are slow and like to look. We hide when we notice them waiting for us so that we can take a bit longer. This flea market was too small to hide for long and we reluctantly left shortly after. The drive home took only 15 minutes because we saw that it should have been a direct line between the cities – oh well.

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. I napped for about 3 hours, ate dinner, and then went to visit a local cemetery at night. I am in the home-stretch so-to-speak, and finish my time at Vix this week. Hopefully it will be a more interesting week for me and the others! So long, for now!

“The [American] Cheese Stands Alone”

Well, excavations began on Monday and went better than I anticipated. “Why do I say that,” you might be asking. The weekend was a bit rough for me after I arrived back in Châtillon. There were a bunch of people at the school when I returned, none of whom I knew. I put my stuff away and came back to introduce myself to German speaking folk (we have Germans, Austrians, and Swiss all staying at the school, so I had no idea where this group was from). It was pretty awkward even though they all spoke English easily. Turns out they were from the Swiss team and there was even a Vikings fan among them. After a short while, I saw a German I met from the week before return to the school with his son. I went to say ‘hello’ and ended up chatting with them most of the night since I sort of knew them and they are on my team. After they decided to turn in for the night, I returned to the Swiss who were still up. I’ll chalk it up to the excessive drinking they were doing, but they weren’t as welcoming as before and some decided to go off on a long tangent about American politics (as if I have any control over that) as well as the general stupidity and ignorance of many Americans (and yes, some points were valid). There was one member of their team who did have enough honor and kindness to defend me and my country (he was actually born in another country but grew up in Switzerland and his family is quite fond of the States I learned). After a short time I grew tired of hearing about NASCAR and Chuck Norris, so I went to bed and tried not to think about it anymore.

I woke up the next morning feeling quite enraged and wronged. I decided I’d try to focus my attention on my database, which worked for a few hours, but by 3PM I was still feeling quite annoyed. I resolved that I would tell the Swiss guys who bashed my country and its people that if they want to continue to believe America is made up of only the stereotypes presented in movies and TV that they were as ignorant as the Americans they complain about. I also had to tell myself to not seek out drama before the excavation even began, especially with people who work on a different team. I decided if it was brought up again, I would use my thoroughly planned comeback at an appropriate time. 

Just before dinner, the two French students I learned about arrived. I asked the girl if she would mind speaking French with me because I needed the practice. She was very welcoming and so we ate dinner together and chatted (as best I could) in French. The French boy came by shortly after we started eating and joined us. He asked where we were from in French (since we were already speaking it) and after I said I was from the States, he talked only to the French girl. I felt ignored for most of dinner so I excused myself immediately after I finished and went to my room where I proceeded to cry myself to sleep. I felt rejected by my peers, alone both linguistically and nationally, and like a victim of a great injustice – I know nobody did anything outright hostel to me, but I think after being on your own in a foreign country for three weeks, some things begin to feel a bit bigger than what they are. I was feeling frustrated by my lack of ability to communicate and therefore, even more isolated from all of these Europeans. I tried to tell myself that the excavation would start tomorrow and I would either meet new people who would be forced to speak in English since it is the language used by the French and Germans on the team, or I would take my rage out on the dirt.

My rational side proved to be right and the next day was better. The French boy, I came to realize within a day, is just shy and as with most of the French, he knows English well, but it afraid to speak it in front of a native English speaker. I also was reacquainted with two people I met last year – a girl from Austria who is very cool and friendly and a guy, who I shall refer to as ‘TSP’ that I taught to speak Minnesotan. They both remembered me which made me feel welcome and the French duo also continued to talk to me more and more throughout the day in both languages. I also met two other German boys who I shall refer to as ‘The Hobbit’ with whom I discuss movies and television, and the other as ‘Germany’. [These nicknames are intended to provide them with some confidentiality and have been acquired through the course of the week from various jokes which I will not even begin to try to explain here]. These are the people I wake up with, eat with, work with, eat with, work with, eat with, and socialize with in the evenings, usually over drinks or German-style ping pong. 

The latter is a most ridiculous and entertaining way of playing ping pong in which there are usually about six players to begin with who hit a ball and then run counter-clockwise to the other side of the table to hit again when it is their turn. It goes quite fast and if you miss a ball you are out until the next round. I was coerced into playing after they said I should play for the honor of America since I’m the only representative from my country. I agreed and immediately missed my first ball. TSP decided he wanted to represent Canada to inspire me to do better by beating my rival – it didn’t help, but it sure made the evening funny and others picked a country to represent as well. We ended up with America, Canada, France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and of course The Shire (for the Hobbit), all fighting for a win. I won once beating the Hobbit which was shocking to him because I am really seriously wretched at ping pong. 

Why have I been talking about ping pong for what seems like an hour? Well, its really the only thing there is to do around here in the evenings other than watching bad movies – its that or drinking which I cannot do every night of the week. We have also been rained out every single day this week except for Friday. Apparently this is really, really uncommon and super frustrating for all involved. I would definitely prefer excavating than waiting around to see if the rain will stop. It is also particularly difficult to excavate after it rains because the soil here is rock, rock that cracks every winter with the freeze-thaw or any vegetation growth. The soil falls between these cracks and it takes ages to clean, especially if it is wet because you can’t just brush it clean like I normally would do. 

For most of the week, the focus has been on cleaning this bedrock and for the Austrian girl and I, cleaning (making the borders more visible) post holes from a house. Tedious, yes. Pain in the back and knees, yes. Fairly boring, yes. Would I rather be doing something else with my day, no. It sounds a bit cheesy, but this is how I know I am doing what I should be doing with my life and that I am a good archaeologist. There is tedium, physical pain, and boring tasks in many jobs out there, but I wouldn’t put up with it and enjoy it in the long run like I do in archaeology. There are very few jobs that take you to far off places (everyone here can’t believe I came all the way from the States, though I think of Europe as being quite close now), give you a chance to meet wonderful people who are both so similar and so different from me, and let you play in the mud and make up songs about loving post holes. It just doesn’t happen. This American cheese who initially stood alone has bonded and melted into a giant fondue pot of diversity here in France and is now enjoying her time with new friends and colleagues.

P.S. Oh yes, here is the thing I mentioned before that I said would make you Iron Ages folks a bit jealous. I also think most of us don’t realize how gigantic the Vix Krater actually is, but this definitely illustrates its size quite well. That is the curator of the museum with me in the photos. The last one was our ‘politician’ photo!