June weather, migraine, and soccer

Two days of migraine which still lingers kept me from the computer and for about a day from daylight, loud voices, smells and most food. I still feel dizzy and light-headed and sick to my stomach so this will be short to keep the "seasickness" from starting at the screen at bay. Also, this post will be another of those tidbit ones where I just write a few unrelated things - not too much brain-power involved.
Firstly, I increased font size after a bunch of friends told me the other day that they had a hard time reading my blog. I thought the letters where huge, which they of course are - on the writer's screen which I am using. On the reader interface they are indeed a little smallish - so let's try this.
As of today the European soccer championship is upon us. It's been total craziness leading up to it and now we have three dreaded weeks of non-stop talk about soccer, non-stop soccer games, analysis, pre - and after-game talks, interviews, expert opinions (there seem to be people considering being a "soccer expert" a decent profession), and folksy stories about this player or that. An amazing number of people consider this the highpoint of the year, or rather two - until the world championship happens in two years. God, I hate it but I spare you the numerous reasons why I think it disgraceful that whole nations go into collective stupor about a few overpaid guys kicking balls around or drunken idiots taking this as an excuse to kick the shit out of their neighbors across the border. Just a few details: the host nations are Switzerland and Austria - their only chance to ever participate in the championship as the host nations are automatically included in the rooster. Predictably, Swizerland lost their first game today. Next Thursday Germany plays Kroatia (Jasi's birth country) but fortunately neither one of us cares at all about soccer. A week from Monday Germany plays Austria and I am considering to postpone my arrival in Austria until after the game.
An interesting side effect that I have been observing the the sudden emergence of German flags just about everywhere. To put it in context: I grew up in a country where flags were absent. Nobody would have ever dreamt about having a flagpole in the garden, a decal on the car, hats, T-shirts, shorts or bedlinens in the colors black, red and gold. It just wasn't done. National pride didn't exist - the roots of that were certainly to be found in the not so distant future of Germany and the fact that there was nothing to be proud of - quite the opposite (which is, of course, also true for countries like Italy and Japan and a bunch of others which never seemed to have much of an issue with flying flags). So German and the Germans never sported flags and the whole notion of pride in the flag, which is so prevalent in the US, is not just strange but bizzare and absurd to me. Seems like a new generation of Germans has taken an event of such enormous, monumental importance as a European soccer championship as an excuse or at least cause to decide that not just Americans, Swiss, French, Brits and pretty much all the rest of them can fly flags and paint their faces in their national colors but so can they. Do I need to mention that I don't care very much for that newfound national sentiment. I am sure its 99.something % harmless but, pleazze, I really don't need cars driving around with German flags on them and grown men wearing idiotic hats in black, red, gold.
Okay, so now that I have bitched, I got to say something nice as well. So, here we go: since I left more years ago then I care to admit, things in the service industry have changed - notably although not radically (but we are on the way to radically). Let me give you an idea how life for the busy professional used to look like in the mid-90s. One, or rather, I would work, say 50 hour weeks, not much but New York Investment Banking standards but 10 hours more than the rest of them. The stores would open by the time I was in the office and close before the time I was leaving. If I didn't leave the office during lunch break or run out in between and then stay longer there would be no food, or only leaft-overs that day. Saturdays the stores would open from 9 am to 1, maybe 2 pm. So everybody, literally, everybody would stampede into the grocery stores by 10 am and you would spend agonizing hours to buy the supplies for the next week, always forgetting one thing or the other and leaving the frenzied stores tiered and crouchy and the rest of the weekend would be spent recuperating from shopping craziness. Sundays the stores were closed, by law. The saving grace where the gas stations which were open and developed into mini-supermarkets. They were only allowed to sell "travel supplies" a term that got interpreted rather loosly over time including first and foremost every type of alcohol, liquor, booze and beer known to mankind. Breadrolls, chips and gummibears, ice-cream, microwave meals (surely, we all have microwave ovens in our cars), pasta, diary products etc, followed. I made many a trip to the near-by gas station when I lived in Dusseldorf paying premium prices for bad food. Clothing, shoes, furniture and cars could only be bought during vacations, unless one was willing to get up really early on Saturday and try and sqeeze in a grocery run before heading to the furniture store. During those frenzied Saturday hours in particulalry but more generally pretty much always the service was bad with a capital B. Clerks would stand aournd and chat about their weekend plans clearly annoyed by the timid customers asking if they could have "maybe, just in case it doesn't bother you too much and you have nothing better to do" a little help with finding the right whatever they were trying to find. If it was something like a quarter before closing time the answer likely was something like "too late now", "got to come back on Monday", "colleague no longer there", "in the process of shutting down for the weekend and can't possibly be distracted from that most important task right now".
Times are definitely better now. Stores are open much longer, shopping after work is possible and the quality of service has vastly improved: the service personnel is downright friendly. I sometimes catch myself staring at the friendly woman at the butcher's store with an open mouth and utter disbelief unsure whether she is playing a particularily nasty joke on me which I don't get or whether she is just friendlier as she, or any of her peers, ever was. Fact is, though, they have gotten more friendly and shopping would now be real fun - if it wasn't for the exorbitant prices which kind of throw a big fat old money-wrench into everything and suck the fun right out of shopping - again.
Other than that: the weather sucks, typical June weather in Konstanz, it always sucks, May is nice, June sucks and the rest - who knows. I am freezing and the light drizzly rain turns my hair into a curly unruly mess (not of the cute kind).
Max and Uli are leaving tomorrow for Austria and although I am looking forward to sleeping in for the first time in more months than I can remember it will be strange to be away from both of them for a week or so after pretty much spending 24/7 with them for the past five months. Although I am very tempted I will not get into the next chapter of the "expat self-torture" over the advantages and disadvantage of here over there, US vs. old-Europe and such like. If somebody has the definite answer, I'd appreciate a note, though. Now I'll rest my weary head ...