How I started blogging instead of playing football

I wrote a book in second grade. It was about Mars. That seems strange to me now, because I don't know about Mars or outer space. I don't even like Star Trek. It's entirely possible that I stapled that construction-paper book together because I liked to draw cute aliens.

After that literary debut I wrote in school of course, both because I had to and because I liked it. I was set (in my semi-tomboy way) against the idea of a girly diary with a heart-shaped lock. But kept a journal (which is the same as a diary, sans lock and glitter) off and on throughout my awkward years. As a teenager, I started to write poetry. It was mostly bad. I got a few pieces into my high school's creative writing magazine, which made me feel embarrassed and exhilarated all at once.  I wanted to be noticed, but felt more comfortable being overlooked. In early college, I let Brian read all of my poetry. No one else ever had. This was probably the first sign I had fallen in love.

I could always write when I needed to, but as my teenage moodiness disappeared, so did my bad poetry. In my twenties, I stopped writing for a while. There would be a furious bout of journal writing every year or so, followed by silence as I searched for jobs, moved apartments, tried to figure out the future. I didn't feel an urgency to write often because being a writer wasn't something you could really DO. It might be easier to make it as an NFL player than as a famous author. And I can't catch.

This blog is a little like my grown-up version of that construction paper book. Of course I enjoy it, but I can also make it cute and colorful and hold it up proudly for you to see. Posting in cyberspace is ultra-public, but private because no one is here at this moment but me and my keyboard. I can pretend it's no big deal. I guess as shy as I once was (still sometimes am) about what I've written, I do my best when I've got an audience. And let's face it, that NFL career was never going to happen.

and to Berlin

You may be tired of me writing about Berlin.
I don't care.
I've written about Berlin before but it's one of my favorite places and I'm going to write about it again. So there.

We wrapped up our trip with Luke and Jackie in Berlin. Our days of cathedrals and quaint half-timbered houses and Christmas souvenirs were over. We stayed in East Berlin hipster-ville, where grafitti is part of the landscape, where buildings are Stalin-esque, and where the hardest ethnic food to find is German. In Berlin we ate Sri Lankan food, rented bikes to ride from east to west, visited the 1936 Olympic Stadium where Jesse Owens triumphed over Hitler.

And while there were hundreds of bars and restaurants and dark thumping techno clubs to visit, it was the end of our trip. Our friends had been on the road for three weeks. We had been traveling hard for one. So on the last night we went back to a familiar place. There's a Cuban bar that made Brian and I feel warm and welcome one February night a few years ago. It offered live music and cigar smoking and bar tenders who wanted to talk baseball. That's where we took Luke and Jackie. We'll save the techno club for next time... maybe.

Smoky Bamberg

On the way to Bamberg, a Turkish samba band boarded our train. They had flown in from Istanbul for a music festival in a quaint German village. These sorts of things don’t happen when you rent a car.

Bamberg is famous for beer. It's most renowned for Rauchbier, or smoke beer. 'What is smoke beer?' you ask. Imagine biting into a ham sandwich. Not just any ham, more like leftover Easter ham. Now imagine that the sandwich is not a sandwich. It's actually beer. And you’re not biting it, you’re sipping it. That is what Rauchbier tastes like. They make it by smoking the malt before the beer is brewed.
 
We smelled the malt roasting when we got off the train in Bamberg, right behind the Turkish samba band. So under this haze of smokey malty aroma, Jackie, Luke, Brian and I started to explore the town.

Bamberg is still in Bavaria, but not by much. It’s in the north Bayern region of Franconia, where Frankish is still sometimes spoken.
Remember that Germany hasn't been one country for very long. Franconia was its own kingdom until 1803. Then it joined in with those redneck Bavarians but never quite gave up its own identity.
That's how the Frankish language survives today, with lots of words ending in a pretty-sounding "la". This would never happen in German, whose words often end with a clunky "gung," "lich" or "chen".

Our foursome’s energy level was a little low after three nights out in Regensburg, but that suited Bamberg just fine. It’s a small city, good for slow wandering and church gazing. There’s a 12^th century convent on a hill, a cathedral where a pope is buried, a riverfront with old bridges, cafes and breweries, of course.
This is postcard Germany.

Though any postcards from Bamberg should really be scratch 'n sniff. They would, of course, smell smoky. 

Crystal ship - Regensburg

Inspired by our elderly countrymen and their Danube cruises, we set out from Regensburg on a river boat trip of our own.

We headed to a place called Walhalla, but more on that later. 

When I went to buy tickets for our boat ride, the woman in the ticket booth glanced at the screen and her eyes lit up. “You are in luck,” she explained, like maybe I’d won a door prize. “Today the Crystal Queen is cruising to Walhalla.” The Crystal Queen, she explained, was the flagship of the fleet. It is inlaid with Swarovski crystal elements and even has an on-board crystal museum. I guess many people would be amazed at the luck we had. Brian was not impressed. He looked longingly at the creaking wooden ship with picnic tables on its deck.

When I was a freshman in college, some of the guys on my floor built a ship out of some old boxes and dorm furniture. They called it the crystal ship and sailed it down the hallway every night for about a week. They were taking a lot of drugs. I don’t think that ship could have made it to Walhalla. 

The  Crystal Queen lived up to her billing. There were crystals in the stairs, on the walls, encrusting the bar, and even a strobe light in the bathroom stall to show off crystals on the stall door. It was a lot more bling than I am used to seeing in Germany. Would this have been a hit in Texas?

Aboard the crystal ship

Crystal stairs

Creepy bride mannequin in the crystal museum

Walhalla is a monument built by a king of Bayern, King Ludwig I. He’s the grandfather of crazy King Ludwig II, who built the Cinderella castle at Neuschwanstein and bankrupted his kingdom in the process. Like his grandson, Ludwig I liked to build things big, and shiny, and impressive.  I imagine him wearing cowboy boots and a huge crystal-encrusted belt buckle.

Walhalla is named after a Norse temple and built to look like the Parthenon (it's also the name of a town in Texas).  It’s filled with busts of important Germans in history: scholars, scientists, writers, politicians. Most impressive is the location - it stands on a steep hillside overlooking the Danube.

After a picnic and a some time to enjoy the view, we boarded our boat and sparkled all the way back to town. Unlike with the crystal ship of my college days, it was smooth sailing.

The Texas of Germany

Luke and Jackie came to Hannover on the hottest day... ever. I don't mean it was really hot. I mean it was bewilderingly hot. Unnaturally hot. Melting into the sidewalk hot. No air conditioning, bad ventilation, if my body were this temperature I'd have a fever, kind of hot. Hannover is not used to this.

So we traveled to the part of Germany that seemed best suited to a hot climate - the Texas of Germany. That's right, we went to Bavaria.

First stop: Regensburg.
Regensburg is on the Danube, which is Donau in German. Of course we can all pronounce that word (dough-now), so why change the name to Danube in English? It's the same case with the state, Bayern. That's not so hard to say. But the Germans don't trust us not to screw it up, so in English we say Bavaria. Of course, no one but a native German could say München correctly (most of the sound comes through your nostrils), so I will happily call it Munich.

Regensburg was originally an outpost of the ancient Roman Empire. The doorway to the huge fort is still intact, unearthed just a couple of hundred years ago. The city has winding medieval streets, a towering cathedral, a charming river front, shops and restaurants and bars on every corner. There's also a bike trail all along the Danube, and even baseball. It makes you wonder why anyone lives anywhere else in Germany.

So what makes Bayern like Texas? Until the mid 1800s, Germany wasn’t Germany at all, but a group of independent kingdoms. Bavaria, like Texas, still acts like its own country. Most of Germany is Lutheran; Bayern is Catholic. The churches are more colorful, more ornate. Instead of the squared-off steeples of the north, they have rounded domes that look like Hershey Kisses. In Bayern, the people are bigger, the meals are bigger, the beers are bigger, the parties are bigger.  Most Germans are reserved; Bavarians are loud. They are considered the rednecks of Germany. 

Jackie with 'normal' sized beers

There were actual Texans in Regensburg too, and Midwesterners, and New Yorkers. Every day, Danube cruise boats would dock in the harbor and release a chattering band of retired tourists headed to their walking tours and swarming around the world’s oldest sausage stand.

Baseball is not the only evidence of a U.S. presence in Bavaria. Southern Germany was under American control after World War II, and is still home to major U.S. military bases. This is why, when I tell Americans that I live in Hannover, they ask “How far is that from Munich?”. They never manage to call it München.

As for that skin-melting heat - it broke on our second day in town, with a storm of Texan proportions.

As American as

July 4th is approaching. That has me thinking of flags, parades, the freedom to shoot your hand off with fireworks, and barbecues. What is an expat to do when looking for groceries from back home?

You can find some American foods in Germany, particularly the ones at Burger King, McDonald's, Pizza Hut and KFC. Apple pie does not exist (no pie pans either) but there are a lot of products at the grocery store with stars and stripes right on the package. Now that I finally have a smartphone, I get to take photos of all this mundane stuff so you can see it with me! I snapped pictures up and down the aisles at the supermarket last week. Because this is Germany, none of the other customers commented. The guy stocking shelves didn't make eye contact or ask what I was doing. Here, the only people who strike up conversations with strangers are crazy people. I was the one laughing while taking photos of groceries. Clearly if anyone was going to start a conversation it should have been me.

Here are some of the American items for sale:

American salad dressing. We call it thousand island.
In Germany, they still call French dressing French. I wonder what the French call it?

 Peanut butter.  I actually prefer the Dutch peanut butter which you buy at the Asian grocery store (of course).

 It's pretty exciting that I found Pop Tarts. It's pretty incredible that they cost 6 euros and 49 cents.

 Marshmallows. I never knew they were American, but I should have. Marshmallows+chocolate+graham crackers = s'mores, and s'mores = freedom.

 Another gourmet American treat: Campbell's tomato soup for 2.39.

 Chocolate chip cookies. These are not very good. As far as I'm concerned the only decent chocolate chip cookies in town are made in kitchens (like mine) of real American bakers (like me) using real American chocolate chips. Did I mention I bake a mean cookie?

 Cheez Whiz, the hallmark of American innovation.  It's yours for just 4.49.

Hot dogs in a jar. This grosses me out. I don't know why, but I think it's the water inside. Americans usually buy hot dogs in a plastic bag, which is filled with equally murky hot dog water. I used to love hot dogs, as most kids do. Then when I was in college I had to cook hundreds, possibly thousands of them, at a concession stand and my hair smelled like hot dogs for days, possibly weeks. I have not eaten a hot dog since. I don't care how patriotic it is.

 American pizza, with a thick crust.

And, from the freezer aisle, the pizza burger. Pizza, burger - why should you have to choose? I think this is a little like a sloppy joe but I am sure I have never seen one in the USA.

So Germans must believe that Americans live off hot dogs topped with Cheez Whiz, cookies with marshmallows and peanut butter, and pizza and burgers, or maybe both at the same time. No wonder they think we're all fat. Or maybe they just think we're all nuts. You'd have to be a little crazy to shoot your cheese out of a can, or walk around the grocery store taking pictures of food.

The hallo code, part 2

I recently wrote a post about the hallo code. It's my attempt at understanding the nuances of when it's ok to be friendly in German culture.

But there's yet another dimension to the concept of the hallo code. From what I can tell, the word hallo may just have more meanings than any other word in the German language. Unlike the word schön, which means good/pretty/ok/nice/fine, the meanings of hallo are actually quite different from each other.
Let me attempt to explain:

Hallo = hello. You knew that already.

Hallo = are you paying attention? excuse me? With a little extra emphasis on the ooo, you can expect this from the cashier when you are texting in line at the grocery store and have reached the cash register. It's also a way for someone to tell you that something has fallen out of your pocket. It's what you say when you want to order a pizza and your waitress is busy talking on the phone.

Hallo = Hey, watch out! This comes from a cyclist who is getting no reaction after ringing his bell insistently at a pedestrian who has wandered into the bike path. You can also hear it from a driver who is angry at said cyclist for riding in the middle of the road because there are too many pedestrians in the bike path.

Hallo = Hey, everyone, all together! Pronounced 'HA lo-oooow!' This is what the announcer sings at the Hannover 96 soccer games when he wants everyone to sing the fight song.

Hallo = an angry way to say what the f*** are you doing? Pronounced 'ha LOOOOOW!' in a really loud and aggravated tone. This is what a cyclist shouts at another cyclist who almost causes an accident by riding her bike in the wrong direction on the bike path. This is also what the Hannover 96 fan yells at the fan behind him who has spilled beer on his head while singing the fight song. It's what the cashier says when the customer is still texting and has not responded to the first three hallos.

So I will wrap this post up with a pop quiz. Please fill in the blanks with the appropriate answer.
Question:

You are walking down the street and see a friend approaching. You say ___________ .
Excited to see her, you wander into the bike path in front of an oncoming cyclist. He says __________! Startled, you step backwards and a key falls out of your pocket. A passerby draws your points to it and says _____________ . Seized with team spirit, your friend wants to sing the Hannover 96 soccer fight song. She kicks it off with _______________ . Standing in the middle of the bike path, singing, dropping your belongings, oblivious to the world around you, everyone in the area joins together in yelling at you:  ______________!

Answers: Hallo. To all of the above.