US trip - Gray-cation

Week 2 of our U.S. trip was the Gray-cation. It was first-ever reunion for my dad's side of the family in Grand Beach, Michigan. There were 23 adults and 5 kids in a lodge sort of a place that used to be a little hotel in the woods.

We decided on day one that if the movie The Shining were set in the Midwest, it would have been filmed at this place. It had a big screen porch, huge common rooms with slightly shabby couches, an old phone booth in the hall, and a player piano that no longer played. Each bedroom had a theme ranging from cowboys to sailboats to kitty cats. I knew that if I heard piano music in the middle of the night, or if spurs clicking their way down the hall, it would mean the place was definitely haunted.

Thankfully, though, we made it through the week. The scariest things that happened were running out of beer in the cooler and finding earwigs where you’d least expect them. We had a pool out back and the beach – perfect for watching sunsets - was a short walk away. If you’ve never swum in Lake Michigan before, picture a very calm  ocean with only fresh water and no seashells. It was fantastic.

It’s funny to get to know your cousins as adults. These are the ones that always lived far away, that we would only see every couple of years. The cousins from my mom’s side of the family have shared kiddie tables at countless family gatherings and seen each other in all stages of awkward growing-up.  We still fall into the roles that we’ve played since preschool. Hanging around with the Gray cousins and their spouses was different. It was more like seeing friends of a friend that you’d met before and always hear about… but never really gotten to know until now.

The crowning moment was on the last night when my cousin-in-law Rachel showed off her design of my father’s and his four siblings’ heads carved into Mount Rushmore. I don’t think they enjoyed the drawing as much as my generation did. It would have looked great on the wall of a Black-Hills themed room, or better yet, the Presidential suite.

US trip - the ballpark

We are in the U.S. and I have already consumed the following: cheddar cheese, root beer, store-bought salsa, free ice water, fountain drinks, bagels, wheat thins, cheese curds (twice) sourdough bread and various items full of high-fructose corn syrup. I have done more here than just eating, but rather than give you the day-by-day chronicle of events, I’ll just pick a highlight or two. For today it's the ballpark.

During our first week in the U.S. we went to a Cubs game.  I am not a Cubs fan but I am a Wrigley Field fan. If I had to pick one experience of Americana, it would be a trip to the ballpark. Here’s why:

You walk in, and the person taking your ticket smiles, asks how you are doing, and waits for an answer. Inside, it smells like hot dogs and popcorn. People are talking, yelling even. They are loud. The people all look different – White, Black, Asian, Latino, and other backgrounds I can’t even guess at. They come in all shapes. Some are huge, some are tiny. Some look like they are fresh from the office, some might have just rolled out of bed. Odd-looking vendors shout out "High Life," "Hot dogs," "Chocolate malt cups" in voices toughened by a decade of baseball seasons. They pass beer down the row while fans pass cash from hand to hand until it reaches the aisle and there’s always a little extra in there for a tip. That’s all before the game begins. 

I like to watch the players when they are not being watched. When the cameras are on somebody else, they stretch and joke with each other and pull on their socks. Their heads follow every the movements of the pitcher and the ball and the catcher and the third base coach. Like everyone else, I like to watch them turn double plays without thinking and run the bases without even breathing hard.

There was no great baseball to watch in this game. The Angels beat the Cubs 13 - 2. We didn’t care. We sang take me out to the ballgame and listened to the organ at Wrigley. We bought a souvenir cup full of Pepsi, right out of the fountain and loaded with ice and high-fructose corn syrup. It was good to be home.

War memorials

During our bike rides through the farmland and small towns outside of Hannover, Brian and I started noticing war memorials. They are not big or shiny or located in prominent spots. There is, as far as I know, no big national memorial in Germany to commemorate WWI and WWII. The Germans were, after all, the losers. And they were the bad guys; that's what we were raised to believe. My impression is that Germans are raised with a degree of shame and regret for what happened here, but also a nostalgia for what was destroyed by the allies. The swastikas have been scratched away and painted over, the flag is only waved at football games, and no old veterans march in parades. There are, however, still some memorials tucked away in shady corners. We even saw one in Hamburg, half-hidden behind the gate of a sports stadium.

Small towns in the U.S. have similar memorials, carved with the names of local boys who died fighting. It's funny to think that Germans remember their neighbors and sons the same way, only they fought on the other side. So we started taking photos of war memorials. I say 'we' because this post is really Brian's idea and it's a good one (though I guess you can be the judge of that).

Brian decided to wear his Polska cycling outfit on the day when we took most of these pictures, so that he could stick it to the Germans on behalf of our friends the Poles.

Memorial in Harkenbleck

Memorial in Oerie

Memorial in Oerie

Memorial for the war with Prussia, in Elze

Memorial in Luedersen

This one has a little more symbolism than the rest - a lion who has been killed by a broken spear in its back. It shows pride in the strong nation that was stabbed from behind.

And here's a different sort of memorial, dedicated to the unknown deserter. It's right in middle of Hannover, in front of the Rathaus. Just recently someone painted "no more war" on it and left a pot of flowers.
It's a tribute to those who didn't want to fight, were scared to fight, didn't feel like it was right to fight, and left the helmet and combat boots behind.

Sorry... I'm still here!

I know, I have not posted in FOREVER. So if you are reading this you may still have some shred of faith in me to come back and entertain you with tales of silly little things that happen to me.

I'm not trying to make excuses, but here's what has been going on:

Last week was the final week of the school year, and rather than subbing, I was copying, filing, and providing moral support for the school secretaries. Then we went to Hamburg for a long day on Saturday to see baby Fiona. She is Tom and Sonja's daughter, who is about 2 weeks old. She doesn't have much of a personality yet, but we like her parents so she will probably turn out all right.

We got home from Hamburg around 1am and turned around to pick up Samantha at the train station Sunday morning. She is a former student of Brian's from St. Paul, who has just graduated college and is traveling around on her way to Copenhagen for a two month program, the beginning of her Master's in Scandinavian Studies. She had a bit of a hard time getting over the idea of staying with a teacher and learning about him as a regular person rather than an authority figure, but it didn't phase her too much because she made the effort to get here and even called him by his first name.

Samantha, Brian, and Sankey on the McCarthy Hannover bike tour

On Monday, I started working a week-long summer camp at the school. Last year I lost my engagement ring on the first day of summer camp, and on the second day, a camper found it. I was not pushing my luck this year, and just left it at home. We did crafts, went swimming, played games, and were generally all happy campers until Thursday. That was the day I physically restrained a kicking and screaming eight year old on the platform at the tram station. Then I had to try to carry her upstairs but luckily larger, stronger reinforcements came to help.

In the meantime, Brian's friend Steve came to visit. They've known each other since middle school, but we hadn't seen Steve in about four years. He's a musician who quit his day job, left his New York City apartment, and is living in Berlin for two months. Unlike Samantha, Steve had no trouble calling either of us by our first names and he mixes a mean cocktail.

Now we are having a deliberately quiet weekend, getting ready for our trip to the U.S. on Monday. I will warn you now that posts might get sporadic again for a while, but don't worry, I am still here.

60 km, one tree, two tubes and an eel

On Friday I went on a day-long bike ride with my Colombian friend Olga. I ride with Brian all the time - fast, with helmets, on the road, wearing spandex and clip-in shoes. I knew that a bike ride with Olga would be a little different. I knew, for example, that she did not have a bike that cost more than her couch and her refrigerator combined, and she only had one of them. Unlike normal people, I own three bikes and my couch sucks. I also knew the ride would not be super fast, so I took my old road bike. It was fast about 11 years ago when I first bought it but lately had a few creaks and was more of a bike to take around town, provided I wasn't on a lot of gravel and it wasn't snowing.

Our destination was Steinhuder Meer, which is a lake about 30km (19 mi.) outside of Hannover. In German, the word Meer means sea. The word See also means sea, but only if it is the feminine noun die See. If it's a masculine der See, then that's a lake. So the North Sea is die Nordsee, the Mediterranean Sea is the das Mittelmeer, and the lake in Hannover with the big scary fish in it is der Maschsee. And the Germans wonder why I have not yet mastered their language. Of course Steinhuder Meer is not a sea at all, it's just a big lake. It's like the size of Lake Geneva or any number of bigger Minnesota lakes.

After riding over railroad tracks, gravel paths, and probably some broken glass on the way, I got a flat tire about an hour into the trip. It turns out that I had chosen the worst possible bike for this journey - the one with tires that were not only skinny but old. We stopped under a tree and as I pulled out the spare tire and the pump from my saddlebags, an old lady stopped to talk with us. Since this doesn't happen often in Germany, I thought maybe she would offer to help us or let us use her phone or something. Instead, she said what you logically would to two women removing a wheel from a bicycle: (this is my rough translation), "pardon me but do you know just how old this wonderfully beautiful tree is?" Olga later invented the story of how her great grandfather planted the tree back when he farmed this land, which is still in her family even though she never lived in Germany until two years ago. Had the old lady been around when we came up with that, I think she would have believed it.

Our trip continued along the Mitteland Canal, through some fields, into the woods and on all sorts of rocky, gravelly, muddy paths that seemed to be taunting my tires and just asking them to pop. They held out though, and we got to the town of Steinhude and the Steinhuder Meer, which looks like this:

It was lovely. We found a place to lock up our bikes in order to wander around and have lunch, until I realized that I would not be locking up my bike - I had no keys. They had been in my saddlebags and must have fallen out as I changed my stupid tire under the stupid old tree. Our only hope was to stop there on the way back and try to find them, or else I would be locked out and learning pretty fast about how to get keys copied in Germany.

I tried not to think about keys or tires for a while and enjoy the town, which I did.  Steinhuder Meer is famous for its smoked eel. It is supposed to be delicious, and looks like this:

I usually like to try the local dish when I'm in a new place, but something about the word eel just made me think of this:

So I didn't eat any. Olga bought one and stuck it in her backpack so she could bring it to her husband. That seems normal. Why wouldn't you ride around with an eel in your bag?

I even enjoyed the first half of our ride homeward, until my tire went flat again. I had already used my spare, but Olga had a kit to patch the tubes. So we patched both of them, put the tire on again and kept going... for about ten minutes. The patches were not as invincible as we thought, and the gravel was unforgiving. The routine went like this: tire goes flat, stopping, tire off, patching, swearing, re-patching, tire on, laughing, tire pumping, swearing, repeat. In the end I changed my rear tire five times. I got pretty good at it. My main goal was to get back to my stupid keys under the stupid old tree (if they were still there) and then I didn't care what happened. By then we'd be close enough to jump on a tram, or I could jump on the tram and Olga could ride home and do some swearing of her own. In the old days, Brian in his shining pickup truck could have come to rescue me, but the best we can do now is a bus ticket or a pair of rollerblades, and neither of those would have helped.

So, covered in grease, with a bleeding knuckle and melted chocolate of mysterious origin stuck to my pedal, we made it back to the big old tree. It was a big, beautiful, wonderful tree, because my keys were lying beneath it, glimmering in the sun (cue up angelic chorus). At least something had started to go my way. Thank goodness for Olga's imaginary great grandfather.

Olga may never invite me to go on a bike ride with her again. And, if she does, I will bring my slow, beat-up city bike and a lot of spare tubes. If there is a next time, maybe I would even try some eel, or stick it in my saddlebags for later.

Hannover anthropology and Genghis Khan

What a funny place we live in. Even though I've been here a while, I still like to observe the local behavior like some sort of low-rent anthropologist.  Here are a few things I have noticed about Hannover and Germany recently:

There are squirrels in the Hannover Zoo. I don't mean running around the concession stands and climbing the trees. I mean they are in an exhibit in the zoo, just like the lions and zebras. I used to shoo them off the patio and Brian would try to shoot them with a squirt gun. Now we live in a place where squirrels are considered exotic.

You can buy beer with coins. This is awesome and possible because the beer is cheap and the coins are worth a lot. After a few months of living in Germany, the coin pouch in my wallet split open. The one and two Euro coins were just too heavy. It's a psychological shift to know that your pocket change is enough for a big beer, or a doner kebab sandwich, or a bunch of bananas and a loaf of bread.

They can't stand the heat. Earlier this week it was hot. It was about 33 degrees, which is 92 in Farenheit. Since that makes it a little uncomfortable indoors since most buildings are not air conditioned, some schools in Hannover and the surrounding area closed due to the heat. I think this is silly. There's no danger posed by a warm summer day, other than a few kids and teachers complaining. The Germans are just not used to weather extremes. Maybe they need a Midwesterner to tell them to toughen up.

Hannover city government is worried about nothing. We got a letter from the city this week, signed and on official stationery, stating that the bike rack behind our building is to be used only by the people working in the city offices next door. Apparently someone from our building has been parking a bike there, despite a warning tag that was placed on the bike recently. What a public menace. The letter said that the bike's owner had a week to remove it or the city would take it away. This is what our local government is worried about.

Nakedness is on the rise. Along with the heat comes more visitors to the FKK beach. I ride my bike past it often. If you recall, this is what I have named the naked lake. It's the designated spot for nude sunbathing and swimming in Hannover. I am not sure if just anyone can hang out there provided they take their clothes off, or whether someone is checking ID's to see who is a card carrying member of the club. I hope it's open to anyone, because I don't know where you'd put your ID anyway.

Genghis Khan - enough said. Our friend Andy was teaching about Genghis Khan, and ran across a video clip of a German singing group from the 1979 Eurovision song contest. Eurovision is a Europe-wide competition where each country sends a musician or group to compete and the audience votes on the best one. Everyone watches it - it's like the Superbowl. And in 1979, these guys represented Germany: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUlZUUqv5IA
You just have to watch it; I can't put it into words.

Talk like a 'Merican

It's time for me to go back to the United States for a little while, because I am starting to talk like an expat.

I now use the word football interchangeably with soccer, refer to summer holidays instead of vacation, and talk about the years I spent at university.I found myself saying that I hadn't shut down the computer "properly" the other day. I'm more likely to talk about a film than a movie, and I take photos instead of pictures.

This is what happens when you leave the U.S. and talk to a lot of people who are either not native English speakers or who not native 'Merican speakers. Either way, I consciously try to avoid speaking English that is spiked with sports metaphors and idioms that would baffle a non-American. I try to avoid phrases like "cover your bases," "right out of the chute," "throw you for a loop," and "throw him under the bus" (apparently we throw things a lot). It's possible that no one in the U.S. even says those things any more. Have I been gone too long to keep up with idioms, much less the latest slang? Maybe I'm like an early colonist who still keeps up with what was in style the day I left the mainland. Pretty soon I will pull out my hoop skirts.

There is a lot of British English spoken at the International School, and even though I don't speak it much I can understand a lot.  If something bad happens that may or may not be your fault, it's unlucky. If everything is set and ready to go, it's sorted. I still am confused when one of our English or Aussie friends greets me in the morning with a "you all right?". As an American, I assume that I look tired, upset, or otherwise bad and he says this because he's concerned about me. It's actually a way of saying "how are you doing?".

No matter how long we live here, I won't develop a German accent (I can't even really speak German with a German accent). My language does, however, risk becoming the sort of vanilla variety of English of someone that could be from anywhere. Or, it could become slowly corrupted by other languages, which is what happened some of our expat friends who have been here a long time. Our friend Andy who used to live in France ends a lot of sentences with the word No, as in "it's cold outside, no?". Tom in Hamburg lets German seep in by saying "yeah, good" much like his wife says "ja, gut," and "no stress" instead of "kein Stress." 

The best remedy for this problem? How about a month back in the Midwest? Yes, I'll take it! We leave July 8th. And once I start talking with Americans again, the rest will be a piece of cake... unless I am way off base.