Midnight chatshow

2 January 2008

I didn’t go to bed especially late last night, but it took me for ever to get to sleep. The trouble is, I start talking to myself as I lie there. Often in German. This becomes even less conducive to sleep when I then start talking out loud to myself in the dark room. I make up new conversations, or go back to old ones to give them another go.

In my head I was back at the Salzburg Christkindlmarkt with my friends. I decided I’d tell them about the things I’d bought when I was there in 2004. First hurdle: is Baum der, die or das? Scheisse, I’m not sure. So I asked my friend. Unfortunately his vocabulary was at this point controlled by me, so he wasn’t sure either. I tried singing “Oh Tannenbaum, oh Tannenbaum” in my head, but as those are the only words I know, that didn’t help either. I guessed that tree was masculine (it is, I rock!) and carried on telling them that it was ein kleiner Weihnachtsbaum aus Holz.

Then I wanted to describe the little wooden picture of Santa I’d bought from the market, with “Merry Christmas” written on it. Not exactly a traditional Austrian piece, but I liked it, so shut up. How to describe it? Nochmals Scheiße, I had absolutely no useful words in my head. Sure, I could feel my hands coming out from under the covers getting ready to gesture wildly to the people who weren’t there, but that wasn’t going to help. I should have moved on to another ornament; I know the word Schlitten, so I’d have got somewhere there, but I think it was at this point that my addled brain decided reading old text messages on my phone would be the modern day version of a gentle sleep-inducing lullaby. Of course it wasn’t, it was more like someone poking you in the eye and shouting, “Bleib wach! Bleib wach!”