Häh? I Don't Understand.

I speak German. But some things still really confuse me. For example, being grilled about my immigration status by a totally-not-amused Frau at the Bundesamt promted me to pull a few "Wie, bitte?" and even the occasional raised-eyebrow shoulder shrug -- the universal sign for "I dunno."

It got me thinking about how weird it is that we have these universally accepted bodily gestures to convey confusion. There's also the one where you squint your eyes, wince a bit, and shake your head. As far as I know, you can pull these moves in nearly any country, and your meaning will be well understood.

Thank goodness we have these physical cues, I was thinking, because if a language is foreign enough to you (like, for example, Mandarin is to me), just saying the local equivalent of "Huh?" might be difficult. But perusing my monthly edition of Max Planck Forshung Magazin, I read about the coolest paper that came out of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in November. As it turns out that guttural utterance has international clout.

They found traces of this sound in languages all over the world: in German it's „häh?"; in English "huh?"; in Mandarin „a?"; in Greek "ε?"; and the list goes on.

What a weird little sound to have such psycholinguistic significance. I guess I'll bring that into the rotation of things I say when I'm confused, like when my HR lady tries to explain my health insurance copay structure to me -- 'cause let's be real, I barely understand that in english. Now for a few life things.

Here is at the kitchen table in my apartment. This is what it looks like when I'm getting ready to blog. I'm not sure if I've been too focused, or if I just haven't been home enough during the day, but today, sitting here at my table, I looked over my right shoulder and for the first time, saw this.

I'm not sure what I love more, the beautiful church towers or the perfect pink building in front of them. Or maybe it's the emergence of the sun -- which I was beginning to believe might not exist here.

<3