Onomatopoeia

The day to day in Germany has become a mostly familiar thing for me by now. You can see pictures of the beautiful vistas and read this blog in order to hear my side of the story. But, living here I have more senses that are constantly being battered with either the new or the newly familiar. I've always been sensitive to smell, I may get that from the Orlowski side of the family, all of whom are allergic to any substance that can enter through the nasal cavity. But I think it would be quite rude to go into detail about the smells I experience on a daily basis (EXCEPT for the bakery...mmm pretzels!)
So I will try my best to add a bang to this post and take you through my day with your blindfolds on and your ears ready for something new and different.
Early in the morning, the air turns metallic and the ears are battered with clinking and clanging. The people are pulling up their blinds: metal sheets on the outside of houses that guard the windows each night, protecting the families from nighttime terrors. There is a wizz wizz of the ropes that keep them in place, and then a bang-clank-bang-clank until they are ALL finally rolled up on top of the windows. If you didn't have the benefit of waking up to the usually beep beep of an alarm, this is the sound that greets you in the mornings. There have been many a times during peaceful morning runs that I have honestly thought some angry robot was running after me, but after a moment of contemplation, realized that it was those damned blinds.

So then its off to school, after a battle with a fridge that sounds like an airplane engine and a asthmatic coffee maker. For some reason, there is a rooster on my way to school. I am not the only one who has a rooster in her town, either. Picture a quite ride through the woods, past the refugee camp, with the proud morning soloist, the German rooster. My new route to school also involves a bumpy ride over the train tracks and sometimes waiting for a train. This is nothing but noise! Pure agitation fills my head as I try to at least reduce the amount of data entering my brain. Its a low boom boom, rumbling the ground from far away. But when a cargo train passes, watch out! It's like in those razor commercials, a sonic boom where there are ripples in the air and your hat blows off your head.

If you're not awake yet, let me take you through a collection of noises through out the school day. The school bell is actually quite nice: an electronic church bell...ding dong ding...like a fancy doorbell. But mix that in with children, little ones, running through the halls, throwing things, and LIGHTING FIREWORKS!! I seem to be the only person in the school who seems to think that this is not a noise appropriate for school, so all I can do is my best to avoid them. (At least we know its not guns going of, right?...Germans have GREAT gun control...)

Oh, and I must insert here the most important and abundant sound you may ever hear in Germany. The kling kilng of a bike bell is the only defense you may have against the dreaded biker. The bike in Germany is a force that can not be reckoned with. You must move out of the way, and you must never WALK in the BIKE lane. Luckily, I am usually the one doing the klinging on my way to school, and I must confess that I take full advantage of this power. Klinging left and right, making innocent people jump out of my way for the sake of their lives!

On my way home, I usually see another train (take cover!), hear that rooster, and then reach the safety of my apartment. It is here where things get predictable. Dinner, pots and pans, the low purr (or growl if its a bad day) of the fridge. At the fall of darkness comes the other parenthesis to conclude another day in Dinslaken. The bang-clash-bang-clash is the cue to settle in against a cold January night, turn down the lights, and appreciate the notes that you contribute to the score.