I'm so not cool.

The other day, I overheard some Germans talking about the general uncoolness of bloggers and big sunglasses.

Germans: "What's with those people who write their lives on the internet? Nobody cares."

Me: "..."

Guess I'm officially the German definition of laaame.

But that does lead me to the question: why do I blog? Nobody does care. But there is something deeply satisfying, for me, about pressing computer keys and writing and seeing it all on a lovely webpage, looking professional and nice, though it's really not. I also happen to know that friends and family who I do not have much contact with are able to read my blog and know that I am continuing to function, and this is somehow comforting. Sometimes I feel that, by keeping up a blog, I am staying connected to people who have meant a lot to me in my life.

So I must genuinely conclude that, despite being lame by non-blogging standards, I do not find my blog so strange and pointless. Well, sometimes.

In other news, Christmas was lovely, complete with an adorable meal of raclette. What is adorable about melted cheese over vegetables/meat/potatoes? It's all in the prep work. Here in Germany, it is fairly common to have a raclette grill, which is a table-top George Forman-style contraption that comes with cute, tiny square pans shaped perfectly for cheese slices and small pieces of vegetable. Half of the fun in this meal is thinking of good flavor combinations and assembling all the ingredients in the tiny pans. Also, what doesn't taste good with melted cheese all over it? One of the aspects of food that Germans really know about is cheese--I don't think I've had bad cheese since I've been here. Even the cheese at Subway is a cut (or several) above the crap we have in America.

Speaking of America, I never thought of myself as a "gluttonous American." But now I realize that, without my own knowledge, I have been imbibed with the American need for things to be big. I mean, ok, not cars or streets or orders of French fries. Specifically, drinks. And even more specifically, coffee. I have noticed in myself a tendency toward annoyance when paying 2 Euro for a small cup of coffee and receiving 6 oz. of joe brewed in a Nescafé machine. I mean, for the same price in the New World, I can get a 12 oz. latte made by a person using locally roasted beans. Blah blah blah, I sound like a damn coffee snob. Hell, I am a damn coffee snob. But when I want a cup of coffee, I want a cup of coffee. Deshalb, I am now drinking coffee almost exclusively at home, where I can drink two cups kostenlos. Sometimes I miss the latté ritual, though.