“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?**

"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!

For Those of You Who Would Like A Little More Glamor With Your Archaeology...

I thought I'd kill some time and have some fun making cataloging objects a little more exciting for those of you faithfully following my blog this summer. Of course everything I'm sharing is based on actual events.

So one of my days started off examining a strange ex-voto of a human head...

I moved on from this object to continue my studies for the day. I heard a strange noise coming from behind me where I set the object down just a short time earlier...

A shadow fell over my workspace, and when I finally looked up, I was face-to-face with this!

Stupid Jean-Jaque-Louis-Philip, always sneaking up on people in the museum...

Hope you enjoyed my procrastination. I'll provide a proper update tomorrow :)

Jean-Claude Van Damme vs. Hedgehogs

I fully intended on writing a legit post tonight, but there is a dubbed Luke Perry movie where he plays a naval pilot and professor of meteorology, which is distracting me both because it is so unbelievable, but also because watching really badly dubbed movies is quite hilarious... And now a Jean-Claude Van Damme film just came on which is another guaranteed stinker full of distraction!

Anywho, I will enlighten you this evening with a bit about television watching in Europe vs. in the USA:

* First, commercial volume does not seem to be 10x louder than the regular program you are watching. It is lovely to not have to scramble for the remote before one's ears begin to bleed.
*Second, there are far fewer commercials. I think this may be the result of government subsidized television (correct me if I'm wrong on this). I believe they have a lot more control over the airwaves, i.e. limiting the amount of English language spoken. Whatever the reason, there are maybe 4-6 commercials (not commercial breaks) an hour depending on the station.
*Third, commercials in general are quite funny and often incorporate a good deal of sexual innuendo. It is not always crude either, often it can be quite comical.

With that, I leave you with a little taste of French commercial watching. The first of these came on during the Luke Perry movie... The second batch I found after watching the first one online... All are hilarious and worthy of three minutes of your time. Remember, you are traveling with me in spirit since I am sharing with you many of my cultural experiences this time. Enjoy! :)

(I'll write a proper update in the next day or so. I'm also trying to get my pictures in order so I can post them soon too!)

Incredible Thoughts

Though I have left Turkey and am home safe and sound, a part of me is still there in spirit...mostly in the form of me describing my Turkish trench assistant to people. He was, to keep it short, a unique spirit whom we termed "The Incredible Edible" in conversation (due to his name, which I will keep secret).

The Incredible Edible tended to speak somewhat poetic English and we later decided that he must think in haiku (5-7-5 for syllable beats). Once we determined this, my good friend Liz was able to tap into his possible thought processes and create some haiku based on real events from this summer. These are the results of her brilliance:

Sleeping-
I need a mattress
I think I'll take her mattress.
Why is she angry?

Bathing-
This water is cold
Thank you for reinforcing
My thought processes

Laundry-
My clothes are dirty
I'll put a lemon with them
And they will smell clean

Eating-
Adam and Lily!
I'm hungry and I am dream-
ing of the meatballs

Hygiene-
They say I'm dirty
But I cannot smell myself
So I must be clean

Sharing is Caring-
I'll take Katie's Coke,
But I'll give some to her friend,
So she can't be mad.

Day in the Life-
This was a big day
First I ran the wheelbarrow
Then sat in the shade

My trip to Iran-
They said I was lost.
But I wasn't lost at all.
I knew where I was.

A visitor-
My girlfriend's coming
Maybe I'll take a shower;
No, I guess I won't.

Creature comforts-
Fans are great for naps.
Maybe one fan is enough
But two are better.

Lost in Translation-
Katie spoke Turkish
But my Turkish is better.
I'll reiterate.

Diplomacy-
Katie's workers call
Her names. But I won't tell her.
She might get angry.


I kid not, all of these are absolutely based on real events. To be fair, he was a kind guy, but was definitely unique. If you are ever interested in hearing more, I have many, many more stories to share :)

Who Doesn't Like a Good Cat Video?

Its been a yucky week so far, mostly because I'm sick again and am starting to feel the crunch of the semester. I somehow got on to YouTube and ended up watching cat videos after a while. These are some of the highlights sure to bring a smile to your face. Enjoy!

Treadmill Kitty
Mea's Long Lost Cousin?
Talking Kitties (an oldie, but still funny, also see the translated version!)
Piano Playing Cat
The Funniest By Far...

And just to provide a brief update... Classes are fine, I'm quite tired though (probably just from being sick). My kids that I'm teaching this semester are pretty awesome...very smart and quick with labs which I think is VERY nice. Outside of school, nothing too exciting going on in my life...its pretty much all school all the time...school and Netflix, haha! Sad to think I'm wasting all of my "good years" in front of a computer or in a book... I'm sure grad school will be worth it in the end...

I don't think I posted anything of substance last week either, but it wasn't a very good week either. Another of my dogs, Chip-Chip, as I called him, had to be put to sleep. I was pretty sad, but he was Rook's best friend, so at least he will have company up in little doggie heaven. Its crazy for me to think that Rook died a year ago already...also crazy to think I was in Europe this time last year too...it went by so fast! Yikes! Speaking of Europe, I will try to get some pictures up eventually or a video. Maybe I'll do that over spring break when I'll have a moment or two for an actual life... Haha! Don't keep your fingers crossed, but I will do my best!

What Would Charles Darwin Think?

Hello, hello! Happy Valentine's Day all! It has been an eventful week in history! Some of you may know that it was Abe Lincoln's birthday on Thursday, but it was Charles Darwin's 200th Birthday as well!

Since the first month of 1001 (the Human Evolution course I TA for) covers nothing but evolution and natural selection, compliments of Darwin, I figured it was only appropriate to throw him a birthday party :) Linda and I teamed up to throw an across-the-hall party Thursday evening chalk-full of Darwinian fun. We named each of our apartments after an island in the Galapagos where Darwin visited (I was Daphne Major and she was Genovesa). Our food was all themed around the Galapagos or Darwin as well, including: fruit, nuts, seeds of various sizes (tied to how Darwin figured out natural selection), a birthday cake with a Darwin fish on it, and seaweed salad, which was quite good I assure you. We also had Darwin-themed games such as "Pin the Beak on Darwin's Finch" and "Darwinian Pictionary." (Click the link to see the results of the game and the cake!) It was all quite clever and dorky overall, but it was a really great time :)

In general, that was the highlight of my week. Pretty uneventful other than the party, but good overall! Here is a link so you can have some Darwinian fun yourself! DEVOLVE YOURSELF!

Winter Carnival!

As I mentioned last week, I was off to attend the Twin-Cities Winter Carnival (see previous blog entry for the link if you want more info). Instead of filling up my entire blog with photos (1. take too much time to load, 2. no one wants to scroll through an endless screen, etc.), I'm providing a public link to my Facebook photo album from the event. The photo here is just a teaser.

I will just start by saying it was so darn cold that my fingers were having a hard time moving to push the button on my camera --- that's with my two-layer pair of gloves. My nose was frozen, my eyes were on their way. Basically any part of your body not covered by something out here will start to freeze...I'm going to go on a tangent for a second because I find this amusing... It gets so cold that your eyes burn and start to water, but, the water blows into your eyelashes because of the wind where it proceeds to freeze almost instantly. Another example I laughed about while walking to the bus stop this morning was that I had a runny nose from the cold and was able to sniffle it back in where it froze hard. I could actually feel the hardened piece of sniffle INSIDE my nose, haha, its so cold its just laughable. I will still take this cold over all the snow we get in Michigan... And we're back. Right, so it was really cold and hard to keep steady for picture taking, but overall, I think they turned out quite nice considering it was night (we were told to go at night because it is better for viewing the sculptures). I think it helped that the ice and snow sculptures were well lit. Anywho, here is the link to the photos: Winter Carnival

Apparently there is a whole story to go along with it. Something about the god Vulcan coming here with someone...not sure on all the details...maybe next year I'll be able to relay them more.

Not much new to report about this week. The semester is still going well. I like my classes and the way I have everything arranged. I have a lot more free time away from campus where I can get my work done, which is quite a relief. No big plans for the weekend. Going to my friend Burt's tomorrow night for a movie night with fellow Anthropology TAs.

Next week, Linda, the girl who moved in across the hall from me and also Burt's girlfriend, and I are throwing Charles Darwin a 200th Birthday party. It will be pretty dorky with various evolution themes and references, but should be a good time.

Have a great week all!