Köln Poem

This is a picture of Magdeburg at sunset from the tip of a giant wood and cloth cone and technical museum.

I wrote this poem a while back, and then I left Cologne and forgot to post it. This one has a bit of German in it and once again is meant to be read a bit slowly. Some of the syncopation is a bit weird but I read it for my American colleagues in Cologne and they seemed to like it. A couple of words to know:
kleiner - smaller
Ampel - Traffic light
Brot - Bread
Grun - Green
Morgen - Morning
Nachmitag - Afternoon
Grundstuffe - ground level (language school context)
schön - Pretty, pleasant, nice
Schloss - Palace
ein paar Sachen - a few things
Okay, you're ready. Poem!


Here’s a little poem I wrote
About my travels thus far. I’ll note
A few things or ein paar Sachen
A trip to Bonn, a day in Aachen.
In eight weeks I’ve learned a bit
About German and just how to say sh*t
And that’s a literal revelation
Came from an awkward host family situation.

Two months is kind of long but short
You see a Schloss, see a fort
And see more things you’d like to see
If time would only let it be
So make a list, and check it twice
Come back when the weather’s nice
Because Köln’s been around a billion years
Chances are good it’ll still be here
The biggest change will be the people,
Who change more often than the steeples
Of the DOM we know and love
That towers……… Up above.
Groups are cool and this one’s great
I hope we meet up at some later date.

Not everything is quite so schön
Some observations of my own:
There are some things that grind my gears
And I’ll take this open forum here
To note things in a different way
Between Deutschland and US of A

Ampel is a problem word
I’m sure grundstuffe has also heard
“Traffic light” is the German bit
In English it’s the time I spend in front of it
Cause it’s the law or to set an example
I always end up following the Ampel
With the elderly who wait for Grun
Through Morgen, Nachmittag and Afternoon.
They stand and wait and scowl at those
Who walk on through and dare oppose
Authority in red and green
The little man in the machine.
I’ve reached a conclusion, I think it’s right.
People age faster at the light.

Bratwurst is problem number two
Just between me and you.
The country brought us Porsche and Benz,
BMW and the Carl Zeiss camera lens.
Precision accuracy and proportion
Void of failure and distortion.
Now let’s take a look at food;
We find it is somewhat skewed.
When we see the wurst and brot
We notice, on a sad note
That it exhibits no control
It’s like a square peg in a round hole
Simply put, it does not fit
But if they put their minds to it.
The Engineers could design a
Wurst that is a little bit kleiner
Make it fit inside the bread
It’s much better this way instead!

Of course there will be good and bad
And all in all I think I’ve had
An average of the positive
This is a place I could actually live.