See the little pufferbellies all in a row?

Morgens um sieben,
unten am Bahnhof,
stehen die Züge
alle in einer Reihe.
Kommt der Schaffner,
dreht am Rädchen,
und whooosh!
Alle sind vorbei.

Only not today. The train drivers (is there a real English word for that? Engineer, says LEO) are striking again. I live right next to the train tracks, and can hear the trains coming and going. Today I've heard two. Normally it's constant. I like it. It's like home and you're never lonely: I don't have a pet, so I get to think: "Ooooh there's my train! Good train!" (Shush... I miss my pooks. Now if only they would occasionally roll over off the tracks like Gordy, everything would be perfect.)

It's the biggest strike in the history of Die Deutsche Bahn, the German Railway, which has been around since 1994. And what's more, they've been striking on and off for the past month. It's intense. Regional and long-distance trains aren't running. Commercial and freight trains aren't running. It's bad, or great, depending on what side you look at it from. But what gets me is that France's transport unions are also striking, and it's all over the BBC and when you search for "train strike" on the NYT, you also come up with articles about France. The German strike is mentioned as little side story sometimes, within the articles. But no, let's not write about a strike that is just as intense, simply because it isn't inspired by the president's pension plans. Zum kotzen.


But in happy news: I moved! I have my own room! That I can keep until I leave! Can you tell I'm excited? I moved! And I can stay!

My room is...

• ...on Hasselbachplatz, the big yuppie bar/restaurant neighborhood. The bars and stuff don't matter too much to me, except in that there's a nice amount of street traffic noise, which makes it just like home. There are several trolley lines and Tobi nearby.
• ...close to the railway, so I hear trains all the time and get to lie awake at night wondering who in their right minds would be traveling so late at night, or if they're simply cargo trains, etc.
• ...12 sq. meters, or about 130 square feet.
• ...part of a 3-persom WG. The other two are students.
• ...in an Altbau on the top floor. There is no elevator, but we have access to the roof, which is kinda a trade off, if you squint funny and forget I don't like heights.

The room is a bit under the weather looking. It needs some love. So, I'm gonna love it. Lutz and Renate recently did a marathon painting of their house and have a lot of terracotta color left over, which looks absolutely beautiful in their kitchen. It's so warm and cozy, especially with their dark brown kitchen table next to it. Copycat time! We're going to be painting my walls terracotta and I'm going tomorrow to order a dark brown carpet.

Do you know how hard it is to find a dark brown carpet that is not industrial-office thin and hard and scratchy? A nice warm dark brown carpet that is a bit thicker and you can dig your toesies into? In Magdeburg, it's near impossible. Maybe it's the whole German brown-taboo thing, what with the Nazis having worn it as a uniform color and all. Maybe. But I really doubt it. Which makes me wonder why my dream carpet is almost nowhere to be found. I should be able to buy my dreams everywhere, right? I'm American, damn it. I demand my dreams in every store, world-wide.