Happie Burthdae meestuh Fraai

This past Tuesday I turned 23. Everybody who grew up watching MTV in the 90's knows the song What's My Age Again by Blink-182. I couldn't count the dozens upon dozens of times I've listened to that song. Back when I was 13, listening to that CD (Enema of the State) and marveling at the ingenious lyrical turns of phrase contained therein, I always came back to a few choice lyrics which I found especially poignant as a teenager in braces just beginning to shape his own independent musical tastes. One of those was, "And that's about the time she walked away from me / Nobody likes you when you're 23."

I always came back to those two lines in particular, thinking they were some sort of dire yet incomprehensible warning from the future; a message from an artist with a decade's more life under his belt than myself, already weary and jaded with life for reasons unknown; the Ancient Mariner relating his tale to the poor, clueless wedding guest. "But why? WHY doesn't anybody like you when you're 23?" I thought. Over the intervening ten years I've come back to that song from time to time to reconsider it, always drawing a blank. The answer, I eventually surmised, was something you had to experience for yourself. Something you can't read in a book or learn from your friends. A truth which has to be experienced first hand rather than vicariously.

So it was a bit surreal Monday night to finally be on the verge of 23, an age which has always had a bit of a strange and mystical sense of destiny around it. Before coming to Hamburg I thought that I had keyed in on the answer. Sitting in my bedroom the night before takeoff, frantically packing and planning and saying goodbye to everything I know and love, the lyric took on a new truth. Here I was, a recent college graduate, about to leave all of my friends and family behind and depart for strange new lands. All of a sudden it seemed that Mark Hoppus' words weren't just meaningless lyrics. "Twenty-three" wasn't a random age or a throw-away filler to complete a rhyme. I was just under two months away from my birthday and about to leave everyone behind for a whole year, the song had truth to it after all. "So," I thought, "it's actually true then. I guess that nobody likes you when you're twenty-three and an anonymous foreigner in a big city."

That little thought, of course, faded pretty quickly when I actually came here. Even before I stepped into the airport and began my journey. Upon arrival in Germany I instantly had a very supportive and friendly group of people to help me out. All of the teachers at my school have just been fantastic and very friendly, Gesche, Manfred and Jakob were wonderful company and very supportive during my first weeks in the city, and I've really been enjoying the company of my fellow Fulbrighters and the other teaching assistants. So it appears that Blink-182 was wrong after all, people do in fact like you when you're 23. I'm very thankful for all of the people I've met in Hamburg so far, all of my friends back home who sent me birthday messages, and that I got to celebrate my birthday in such a fantastic and unique city.

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Anyway, felt like waxing poetic a little bit there, I suppose now I can tell you what my birthday was actually like! It was actually a really great day. The sun was shining, it wasn't too cold, and there was barely a cloud in the sky, aka Perfect Fall Weather. And believe me, days like this are practically unheard of in Hamburg. My first class at 8 am was taking a test, so I got to stay in bed a little longer, and throughout the day I got multiple renditions of "Happy Birthday" from my fellow teachers and students in class. My favorites were two of my 6'th and 7'th grade classes. Hearing a class full of 20 6'th graders singing "Happy Birthday" in little-German-kid accents was pretty cute ("Happie Burthdae meestuh Fra-ai, Happie Burthdae to joo"). When I walked into my 7'th grade class they had actually turned off the lights and lit a candle on the teacher's desk, and when I walked in they started the song.

Later in the day I went to Gesche's house with Loic for a birthday dinner. It was really nice to see them again after being away for a few weeks, and the dinner was really excellent (beef goulasch with potatoes). Gesche also got me a birthday present, a book called "99 Orten in Hamburg" (99 Places in Hamburg), which is a sort guide book with all of the interesting out-of-the-way places in the different neighborhoods of Hamburg and a page or two explaining their significance. I don't have a guide book for the city or anything, so maybe I'll try to make my way through all 99 before I leave.